The Reeds of Lake Titicaca

 After our hair raising bus trip out of Bolivia, we arrived in Puno, Peru on the shore of Lake Titicaca. We arrived in the early afternoon and took a bike taxi to our hotel. This guy had quads of steel, peddling the two of us and all our gear through traffic and up the slight rise to our hotel. We checked into the hotel and had some time to check out the town. One thing that stuck us about Puno is how dirty the air is. The smell of diesel is strong from the cars to the point, where at night, you can see a diesel haze in the headlights of the cars. They obviously don't have emissions standards/filters in Peru and it's disgusting (not to mention cough inducing)!

More photos are in the Peru album.

We started with lunch, because we were both ravenous and ended up at a place with a menu del dia that was at least cheap and filling. After lunch, we went to the cathedral, which is deceptive. It looks very impressive from the outside, but the inside is spartan and grim. Across the street is the only original colonial house still in town. Now, it's home to a collection of tour agencies and tourist junk shops. It has a great, ancient cactus in the courtyard though.

We got lucky and arrived in Puno on May 2, which is right in the middle of the Feria de las Alasita. During this festival, you buy small versions of something you want in the next year. Then, you get a priest to bless the simulacrum and then, people believe  you are more likely to achieve your wish. There were a ton of typical, big life things like small houses, or baby dolls, or stacks of small fake money or even a diploma from Harvard. Sorry, that was the only non-South American university we saw. There were even some odd ball things, like itty bitty sacks of rice, or miniature wrestling rings. I don't know what you're preying for if you do those things.... Of course, it's a festival, so there were other things too. Like carny rides and games. Or food that was served in very small servings. It went on for blocks and blocks and was a blast.

The next morning, we woke up very early because a taxi was picking us up to take us to a boat. The boat took us out to the Uros islands, more specifially, Victor and Christina's island. The Uros islands are crazy. They're manmade, floating islands built out of reeds. The reeds cover the lake as far as the eye can see. People have been living on these islands for hundreds of years. Initially, they built gigantic reed boats and lived on them in order to hide from a conquoring tribe that was trying to take them over and turn them into slaves. Since then, they've learned how to build islands and just use smaller boats for getting around. The islands are built starting with a base of floating moss that shakes loose during the rainy season. These moss packs are lashed together and then reeds are thrown on top to a depth of about 3-5m. Then, they build houses and whatever other structures they need on top of that base. In the rainy season, the reeds rot and a new layer is needed every week, while in the dry season, it's every 3 weeks. These days, the rope they use is nylon and some of the structures have a wood or metal frame so that they don't need to be rebuilt all the time. Also, the reed boats are partially made of old plastic bottles, which last a lot longer and float better than the reeds.

We spent the rest of the day and the night being hosted by Victor, Christina and the rest of their family that live on one of the islands. They are set up to host up to 20 people, but that night it was only us two and two girls from Paris. The time was fairly laid back and consisted mostly of lounging around in hammocks, however, we were served some fantastic freshly pan fried trout. There's a lot of trout in Lake Titicaca, but it's not native. It's a number of different Canadian varieties, of which I could recognize rainbow and lake trout. The native fish are too small to be a significant industry, so at some point, they introduced the trout.

They also had us dress in traditional clothing, which was definitely for shorter, rounder women. Once properly attired, Victor took us out on his reed/plastic boat to show us how he fishes (using a small net) and harvests the reeds. Originally, they harvest the reeds by hand, but now they use a long stick with a sharp knife on the end to efficiently cut a swatch of reeds. They then dry them for a month before they can use them for construction. They have to harvest reeds and build constantly because their island is continuously rotting underneath them and so they've developed a number of techniques to replenish the island. For instance, every once in a while, everybody on the island gets together and they pick up a building and move it to the side. Then, they put new reeds down on the house's palate  Then, they pick up the building and put it back. It's pretty incredible. Victor et al. are also experimenting with new approaches. For instance, they have a little garden, whose soil came from an old island that rotted too much. For the moment, they're growing flowers and mint, but are thinking of growing veggies at some point. They also have two pet cats and a pet flamingo! They also have electricity from solar panels and batteries to provide some creature comforts to us tourists.

They next day, after breakfast, we took the slowest ferry in the world to Taquile island. It's a natural island and it took 3 hours to get there and that meant we only had a couple of hours on the island. The entire island is terraced because people have been farming and raising livestock on it for a very long time. It was a complete tourist madhouse, which was a little off-putting  but we found a restaurant for lunch that wasn't too busy and had a great view of the cliffs and the water. Catherine said it reminded her of the Amalphi coast in Italy. The islanders speak a different language than the Uros people and have been relatively isolated. They have an interesting textile tradition too. Men knit and women weave. In particular, men have to knit a hat that looks like the old fashioned Scrooge nightcaps. The color of the cap says whether they are married or not. For the wedding, the bride has to weave a belt for her husband, which she gives to him during the ceremony. We saw at least one of those belts, which was the most detailed weaving we had seen anywhere on this trip.

After another stupidly long ferry ride, we were back in Puno and checked back into our hotel. For dinner, we went to one of the better restaurants in Puno (according to the guidebook), that was right on the Plaza de Armas. It was definitely tourist focused, but we took advantage of that fact and I had some excellent lasagna, while Catherine had a more traditional dish.