We lake it here in Peru
Trip Start
Jan 28, 2008
1
63
83
Trip End
Sep 18, 2008
Puno,
Peru
Monday, July 7, 2008
We had initially planned to do an overnight homestay on the Taquile Island, but the upcoming protests in Peru (regarding workers salaries) threatened to shut down public transport for two days, stranding us in Puno, and thus we would miss the start of our trek in the Machu Picchu region. So we booked a day tour with Jumbo Tours (decent company).
We started very early in the morning, and arrived at the boat jetty around 7:30am
Reed boat (the local bus) on Orus Islands.
. Our tour boat first took us to the floating Oros Islands community. The majority of the people are of Aymaran origen. They have existed on these floating islands for hundreds of years. The reeds a central to their lives. From these water plants they make their floating islands, the houses, eat them, use them for fuel, and make boats, clothes, toys and other crafts. Each floating island has about 10 families. The islands are fixed to the shallow lake floor, but they can move if they don´t like their neighbours. And we were told that if they don´t like the behaviour of one of the families, they just chop their piece of the floating island off and set the family ´free´. Unfortunately, a down side of living on the damp, floating islands is a shortened life expectancy, mostly due to a high % of arthritis crippling the middle aged. Another problem is the water pollution from Puno town affecting the lake, and therefore the Oros Island community´s water supply.We got to walk around on one of the islands. It was fascinating. The man representing the families of this little island was very funny. He explained in Spanish (our guide translated) many things about the culture, with demonstrations too. Sometimes when you visit communities you feel a little bit like a trespassers, but today we felt very welcome. They even gave us a trip across a little part of the lake in their reed boat.
Solar power prevents island fires.
From the Oros Islands we headed further out into Lake Titicaca (about 3 hours) to Taquile Island. Here the majority of people are Quechua. They are particularly well known for their knitting crafts. More interesting though, is that the men do a lot of knitting, and as we walked around the tiny main square at the top of the island, we saw many men knitting beanies using 5 needles at a time! The people on this island also identify themselves (age, gender, marital status and seniority) by the type and colour of hat they wear. Imagine how simple that would make things for single men and women in Australia if all they had to do was wear a special piece of clothing to show that they were available and looking!
It was a wonderful way to spend the day, and I was very excited to have completed our mission to buy Rosalie a beanie and gloves. Hopefully they fit :)
NP: Lake Titicaca is suffering many problems due to humans. I already mentioned water pollution, but the lake is also drying up due to increased evaporation as the global temperature rises. This is very obvious on the north western side of the lake where all that is left is a large mud plain, and the evaporation off the lake is visible as a fog.
