Lake TITIKAKA - floating islands, Juana´s yard
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2008
1
11
23
Trip End
Sep 22, 2008
Puno,
Peru
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
After a good night´s sleep, it was an early start to head to Lake Titicaca. We got some tuk tuk / richashaw type things down to the lake port, where we met Carlos, the guide, and got on the boat to tour the lake
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. Lake Titicaca is massive, around 8000 sq kms, and is the highest navigable lake in the world. Close to puno the water is a bit polluted, but a bit further out and the water is drinkable! It was about half an hour to the Uros Islands - a group of 30 man made floating islands made out of dried reeds and inhabited by the Uros people. These are pre-incan people and were the first inhabitants of the lake, to escape from the inca empire and the spaniards. Instead of worshipping the Pachamama (mother earth) they worshipped a similar mother lake. It was really cool - they relied on those reeds for practically everything - they ate it like a banana (it is rich in lots of stuff like iodine so they had great teeth), the island is made from it, their homes, boats, even the souvenirs that we could buy. They wear really colourful clothes, especially the women, bright pink seemed to be the fashion. There were 10 families on the first island we went on, each family had to contribute to the island in several ways, otherwise their part of the island would literally be sawed off and they would no longer be a part of it. We were shown how it all worked and had an opportunity to buy souvenirs and look in the homes. Some had solar power, to give them electricity for light. We got on a reed boat to the second island, which was apparently like the ´capital´ of the uros islands in that it had a post office and a public telephone, which is impressive considering its just a man made floating thing in the middle of a lake. It was about 2 and a half hours to the Amantani, a decent sized island which had a population of about 4000
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. We went into pairs and were given a local family to homestay with. Our ´mama´ was a small lady called Juana, and her house was lovely! The communication was difficult as she spoke the native language of Quechua, but understood spanish and spoke a little spanish and no english at all. Thanks to my phrasebook, I did manage to converse and make conversation, finding out that she had 3 children, aged 10 14 and 15, the 2 eldest studying in Puno, and that she´d been married for 13 years. As soon as we got there, I just dumped my stuff in my room and asked if there was anything I could do to help her prepare lunch. I helped her peel some beans and she seemed very grateful. The lunch was lovely, soup for starters then potato/uca with cheese, followed by mint tea. Her youngest son, Fernando, came home from school and was very friendly. We gave them the gifts we brought them.. about a fiver´s worth of rice, spices, tang, other food, a lighter, a penknife, a sketch pad and colouring pencils. Around 3 I met up with the rest of the group again to hike up to one of the mountain peaks, where there is a temple which isn´t open. There was a great panoramic view of the lake, and we caught the sunset which made a good photograph. After that we went back and had some dinner, spent time with the family. Fernando is a hyper little guy, always playing his blow-type instrument and being a typical energetic ten year old. I was impressed that he taught himself that instrument and made his day by giving him my harmonica, which he was very grateful for and I could hear him playing away at it way past bedtime
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! It was good to feel like I was in a home, for example Juana would shout Fernando´s name several times before he came for dinner, it really did feel like a proper family and not like a show for the tourists. Ernesto, her husband came home from a hard days work, and he was a nice character too. We had a kind of local party, where we all dressed up in traditional clothes (the guys in wooly hats and ponchos and the girls in some sort of shirt / dress / skirt thing). There was a band who played traditional music with local instruments which was really good. The locals did some traditional dances, which ended up being hilarious, and my "brother" Fernando performed in one of them, I was so proud! Our mama danced with us lots, it was hard to follow how she did it, but still very fun. We went back to the house and had a good nights sleep, and there were pancakes for breakfast! We had to leave early so we said our goodbyes and I managed to tell her in spanish that she´d been terrific and I had a great stay. We got the boat back to Puno and were told we had to stay until Thursday as there are roadblocks due to protests and there was no going anywhere. We had a group meal that night and I tried the local specialty, kingfish, caught from the lake, but I wasn´t overly impressed with it. Ended the night in a bar called Ekekos and had a cool time there.
I´m afraid there won´t be any pictures in this entry
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. My 8GB memory card has been corrupted and I have lost over 2000 pictures and videos. Good thing I uploaded them to travelpod when I could. I´ll be getting a new memory card so it should be fine for my next entry. It´s just a shame because I didn´t upload any videos, and I didn´t get to upload the latest ones, which were really really good photos of the uros islands and the family stay. I´m going to get another memory card 2moro, with the hope of finding some specialist software / person to recover them, thats being optimistic. Oh well, but (hopefully!) I´ll keep all the memories in my head. Ciao for now!--- the pics included here have been stolen off other people in my group, so thanks to them!
