Lake Titicaca - Uros and Taquile Islands

January 19, 2008

(Matt)

Though initially bummed out by the fact that Bolivia now requires visas for Americans at the rate of $100 per person, which we could not justify for a four day trip to camp on Isla del Sol and Isla de la Luna in Lake Titicaca only to return to do the Inca Trail on the 25th, we had a very nice day today.

We were up at 5:45am, ate breakfast, and walked to docks, where we got a boat at 7:45am headed to Taquile Island in Lake Titicaca, which is a 3 1/2-hour boat ride from Puno. Luckily the boat happened to be stopping at the floating islands of Uros for a half hour, which is really all you need there. 

Unlike Taquile Island, the islands of Uros, of which there are over 40, are manmade islands created from reeds that grow naturally near Puno on the banks of Lake Titicaca.The Uros indigenous people were originally forced onto the lake as the Incans pushed further and further into their territory.

The reeds are stacked on each other and some buoyant root material to make an island. The reed islands are then tethered to a pole that is hammered into the shallow lake bottom to keep the island from floating away.

The Uros people make their homes, their furniture and their boats out of the reeds. They also eat the tender bottoms of the reeds, which we tried today (not very tasty).  Because the reeds rot so quickly, especially during rainy season, the islands must be constantly maintained by replacing the reeds. A few hundred people still live on the islands. There are even four elementary schools on the islands. Tourists like us have become a very important way for the Uros to survive. Pictures from the Uros islands are at the bottom of this blog entry.

After that, we rode the boat, which was principally a boat used to transport goods to the people that live on Taquile Island, for another 3 1/2 hours across Lake Titicaca.

For those you have not been to Lake Titicaca, it should be pictured as an inland sea. Bordering Bolivia and Peru, it sits 3,812 meters (12,507 ft) above sea level, making it the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. By volume of water, it is also the largest lake in South America. Lake Titicaca is not only big,  it is beautiful. It is surrounded by many mountains and rapidly changing weather patterns that provide  billowing thunderheads, severe dark rain storms, and sunny blue sky moving across the lake at the same time, depending on which direction you look. The water is a very deep blue. Even after almost 7 hours on the boat today, I never stopped being entranced by that water. Hopefully, the pictures will do it justice.

We arrived at Taquile Island, which is an island with a population of 1,700, and hiked to the top of a hill and had lunch overlooking Lake Titicaca. We ate trout, rice and papas fritas (fries, which are universally served with almost everything you eat in Ecuador and Peru). We then walked around the island for a couple of hours and caught the boat back another 3 1/2 hours.

Though we both applied sunscreen this morning, we are both sunburned. Actually, Amber is so sunburned that you would think she spread Crisco on her face before we left this morning.

We arrived in Puno and had a nice dinner and some good coffee, the first we have had since arriving in South America (Ecuadorians love Nescafe, but that is not coffee really).

(Amber)

A few quick notes....

The boat was crazy...and great. We road on a collectivo, not a tourist boat, which is always so much more interesting. It was packed with locals transporting goods, and Matt had to do his fair share of melon moving, etc.....I loved soaking it all in. Many of the people didn´t even speak Spanish. They spoke their tribal languages. So Matt was lugging barrels of chicken parts and taking instructions with hand signals.

The different tribes here all make their own clothes and have very distinctive dress. You´ll see in the photos that some where aprons and straw hats, others wear skirts and hard round hats, and many wear colorful puffy skirts and black headdresses. On the boat, many were knitting and sewing these things. With just string of different colors and occasionally two small needles that looked like knitting needles.

Many of the men wear colorful hats that look like old-fashioned night caps. They knit them themselves with tiny needles. The men all knitted hats on the boat today. It was amazing to watch.

So when you look at the photos, pay specific attention to the outfits, because they´re a very important part of the culture here. They hold great, and ancient, meaning for the people. The children wear them too, depending on their tribe.

You´ll also notice a few photos I took of people´s feet. All of the indigenous men and boys wear the same sandals, which don´t offer much protection, and their feet indicate years of hard work starting from a very young age. I just thought it was fascinating, and I happened to be on a boat with many, many sets of them all day and was able to get some good incognito shots.

The boat broke down several times, and the defacto captain would put down his knitting and beat on the engine with a screwdriver. Once he had to suck water from the bilge with his mouth. He was always able to get it running though! I would have been more worried, because we were essentially in the middle of a sea, but the exact same screwdriver technique was employed when we were in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam, and it never failed.

Now my daily note on food...if you are what you eat, we are bread, fish, and soup.

It´s been a great day. Really beautiful lake, incredibly high altitude  (which leaves you sucking wind and makes fragile pale skin cook in the sun) and amazingly captivating, ancient cultures.

Here are our pictures. We know it´s a lot, but we really love to capture these images as a part of our journal. Hope you enjoy..at least some of them!

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