Lake Titicaca for Thanksgiving
Trip Start
Mar 17, 2005
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92
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Trip End
Mar 13, 2006
Lake Titicaca,
Peru
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
We took a two day overnight trip out to see some of the islands. We visited Uros, a group of islands off Puno that are made entirely of reeds. It felt rather touristy, but still fascinating that thousands of people live on top of just a few meters of reeds that are constantly being replenished.
After another three hours on the slowest boat ever made (which by the way almost sank, seriously) we arrived to Isla Amantani
Alpaca´s walking through town
. This island felt much more authentic and it was where we would spend our Thanksgiving night. There are no cars, electricity, running water or bathrooms inside a home on the island. While eating rice and potatoes by candlelight we discussed that this was quite a different Thanksgiving than what we would be spending at home. Our host family for the night were wonderful and we loved seeing how they lived day to day. They did not speak a word of English and I (Amy) donīt speak a word of Spanish. Luckily Matt does pretty well keeping up keeping our conversations basic but still filled the time as we sat smiling at each other. During our visit we climbed up 1,000 feet over an hour and half to 13,629 feet, the highest I (Amy) have ever been in my life. As we were huffing and puffing our way up we joked that at the same time we were climbing, everyone we knew was at home eating as much as they wanted all night long. I sure wished we were eating turkey and stuffing at home instead of getting altitude sickness later that night. As I was on the upswing from a horrible few hours of headaches and nausea, I stayed behind to rest later that night. Matt headed off with the family to the fiesta that all the visitors were supposed to attend. It was full of dancing and very long songs (over 20 minutes long!). They dressed Matt up in their traditional clothing, photo attached.
The following day we went to another island, Taquile, featuring another indigenous community. It felt much more touristy than the overnight island, so we were ready to head out afterwards.
The following day we headed into the Bolivian side of the lake to Cocacabamba. It is such a cuter town than Puno on the Peru side. We love the prices here as well with $6 hotel rooms for the two of us and $1.50 meals. After relaxing for a day we headed off to La Paz.
