Lake Titicaca

How the floating islands are constructed

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Lake Titicaca turned out to be quite different to what I was expecting, I guess I thought it would be a lake surrounded by high mountains.  But in reality it was a huge lake surrounded by dusty, bare hills and poor villages.  The town we stayed in was Puno (where it rained for the first time during my trip!) and it was a pretty simple town, not too touristy at all. 

The main point of going to Puno is to visit the floating islands of Uros.  The islands are built on beds of reed and all the houses, schools, boats, everything really is made from the reeds.  The islands are quite small, but there are dozens of them.  They were originally built by the locals as a way to escape the Spaniards, but now it is mainly to serve the tourist market.  I enjoyed seeing the islands and people’s ingenuity, but it did make me wonder where the cultural anthropological balance is between the virtues of maintaining unique cultures and just holding people back from progress...

Funky boats

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While cruising about Lake Titicaca (altitude 3800 metres) I started to feel quite unwell and when we climbed a few hundred metres up a solid real island I began to feel terrible and the higher I climbed the more I just wanted to lie down and sleep.  My head ached, my neck ached, my shoulders and back ached and I couldn’t face food at all.  Yup, I got a touch of altitude sickness... it was a terrible feeling and all I could do was press on, eat coca leaves and once back at the hotel, sleep and sleep.....

I felt a bit better the next day, but it took a few days to get over it - all very weird given I’d been above 3800 metres for a week by then!