Shades of Italy
I slept under so many heavy blankets that my hips began to hurt and I was forced to shed two of them in the middle of the night. Dodo got up to pee at 2am and had to cross our little island to the bathroom building. She said she'd never seen stars like that - they filled the sky. After breakfast we were to take a tour of Uros and then head deeper into the lake to Taquile Island.
Our floating island is located in the "lesser lake", which is guarded by two peninsulas and is much shallower than the "greater lake", where the Uros used to live. Twenty years ago there was a large storm that destroyed a lot of the floating islands so they decided to move into the shallows.
By 4:45am it was bright out. We got up, layered up and headed outside.
I climbed the lookout tower for a view.
Looking north to our neighboring island.
Rudy was awake early and soon Irina joined us. The sun, once it gets a few feet above the horizon, heats everything up swiftly.
A look back towards Puno, west.
They had a cat on their island, it usually was in hiding from Rudy. It came out to make friends.
We drank tea, walked around the grounds and took photos as we waited for breakfast.
We got homemade rolls, pancakes and fruit salad.
We packed, loaded our luggage in the boat and headed out for a tour of Uros.
Some of the lookout towers were fancy.
Others were leaning and in need of repair. This boat is the floating store. Once a day it visits each island to sell all kinds of things you'd find in your local bodega.
The traditional boats don't have motors. I suspect it takes quite a while to get anywhere in these.
Vidal showed us the local grammar school, it's on an island 5 minutes from his. Rudy will go here in a few years. He also took us to other small islands to see the local hospital and even the 7th Day Adventist Church. I wasn't expecting that. After we toured Uros for an hour he pulled up to a larger boat. We loaded up our luggage and said goodbye. We were on our way to Taquile Island.
It took an hour and half to reach Taquile. We passed through the opening between the two peninsulas out into the deep water. The northern peninsula has Quechua-speakers and the southern peninsula has Aymara-speakers. As we approached Taquile, we pulled around the eastern, quieter side of the island and got off near a rocky beach.
It looked just like southern Italy. Crystal blue water, terraced hills, the odd tree. Titicaca is so large that you get tricked into thinking it's an ocean. Our tour guide Clever (yes, as in smart, he told us upon introducing himself) gave us an overview of our day. We were going to be climbing to the top of the island, about 1,000 feet up, then we'd get a crafts demonstration from the locals followed by lunch.
The Taquile people are farmers and artisans.
Clever explained that they have a collectivist approach to tourism. Tourists can stay here with the locals in their homes, but after one day they have to rotate to another local house. It's their way of sharing the tourism income widely.
The nearest doctor is at the north end of the island, a four hour walk. As a result, Taquilenos rely on home remedies for a lot of their ills. Many of the plants growing alongside the houses are used medicinally.
As we got higher up on the island, the lake only seemed to get larger. This is a view across to Bolivia, which shares the lake with Peru.
I kept getting a strong sense of deja-vu. Here we were on a small island in the middle of a large lake in South America, 12,000 feet above sea level. I kept thinking I was in the Mediterranean.
Looking out towards the Peruvian shoreline the feeling remained.
We hiked down to a local restaurant for lunch. The buildings were covered with passion fruit vines.
While we waited for lunch, we were given a demonstration by the locals. They are known for their knitting and weaving. The women weave and the men knit. They knit their own hats, they knit sweaters, gloves, just about every type of garment. Matter of fact, they were knitting the entire time Clever was talking us through their history.
The women weave the wide belts worn by the men. They weave one per year for their husbands. The belt contains the history of that particular year. Each January, the men change their belts and keep the previous one. This is how they keep track of their history.
There are three types of hats worn by the men. One is snug with earflaps and is worn by older men who used to hold political office. The solid color hat is for married men, the hat that is half white is worn by single men.
They also have their own music, made with drum and flute. If I weren't being polite I'd describe it as sounding like a bag of cats thrown down the stairs.
They then began to dance, pulling people from the audience. I managed to escape.
Lunch was fried trout. The lake is full of them, they were accidentally introduced to Titicaca 40 years ago and have been wreaking havoc, eating all the smaller indigenous fish.
After lunch we took a slow walk toward a dock on the Eastern side of the island for our ride back to Puno. We were going to stay in Puno for a few days.
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