Lake Titicaca

We arrived in Juliaca and our driver took us one hour to Puno, which is the Peruvian city on Lake Titicaca. We arrived in the evening and discovered we were staying on the 8th floor of the hotel overlooking the lake!!! Both mornings waking up in this room, we could see a gorgeous sunrise over the lake right from our window!

We were staying right in the touristy area in the old part of the city centre and was very easy to find shopping and restaurants. I had alpaca medallions for dinner and we walked around the streets enjoying the music, parades and dancing that was taking place. It seems Peruvians have a parade almost every day to celebrate something. Such a happy and musical culture!

We were back to high altitude and layers of clothing, but it was refreshing compared to the sticky heat of the jungle! It was nice to have WiFi again and let everybody know we didn't get eaten by snakes.

The next morning we were picked up at 6:45 and taken to the port where our boat tour awaited. We took the boat through Puno Bay, which is now only about 4m deep. Puno is very worried about evaporation because they may lose their "coastline" to Lake Titicaca and their tourist industry could be jeopardized. Boats must drive very slow through this area of the lake.

We went to the Floating Islands of Uros, which we actually saw on Amazing Race once. They are manmade islands on Lake Titicaca where people live permanently. Each island has several families on it and they share these special boats.

The islands are made of several meters of dirt and totora (similar to straw) all strung together to make an island. There are more totora underneath the houses and they also use it for their beds. These little huts are lit with solar panels for their radio, tv, and lights.

After looking inside the huts and seeing how they live, they offer you a ride on their boat. Of course their main source of income now is tourism, and so the children sing for you and they try to sell you things. I bought two little boats for the kids for the bathtub.

Next we took a very long boat ride to Taquile Island. We had to hike up to the main plaza and could see the Bolivian Andes across the water. 40% of Lake Titicaca belongs to Bolivia and 60% belongs to Peru. We had a wonderful lunch of omelette, quinoa soup and mint tea overlooking the lake. The island uses the tourist money to install solar panels to power the water to the top of the island and stream down in pipes. This prevents the residents from having to cart the water up the hills from the lake. Everything sold on the island is pretty expensive because they have to pay the residents to lug everything up the hills. We saw one poor guy who must have been carrying like 40 dozen eggs on his back.

We took a long boat ride back to Puno and decided to walk back to the hotel instead of taking the transfer bus, so that we could explore our last night in Puno. We bought a bag of popcorn for one sol off the side of the street and it tasted pretty good! We enjoyed a nice dinner in a pizzeria with a wood oven and went back to the hotel to pack up our things and get ready for the next adventure. We did get some update emails from back home and I believe it was around this point that I decided I was ready to come home.