Unusual Islands

After the Inca Trail, Lucy and I spent about two days recovering, i.e.avoiding stairs at all cost. My legs were more sore than I could possibly describe, but it was so nice to be indoors and dry and not smelling like b.o! After a day or two in Cusco, Lucy and I took a bus to a town called Puno, on the Peruvian shore of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world at about 3,800 meters (12,600 feet). We got to the bus station on time, super paranoid about getting robbed after our charming escapade in Ecuador, and waited for the bus to come. Sitting next to me was this woman with a baby on her back wrapped in a manta (the Peruvian/Bolivian/Ecuadorian version of the Mexican serape, the large woven fabrics). She looked about 26 maybe, her baby was probably a year old, and she just sat next to me and started crying, silently, but with the tears streaming down her face. After a few minutes I felt really badly for her and asked what was wrong...it turns out she had missed her bus and didn't have money to buy another ticket, and the bus company wouldn't let her just take a later bus. After a thirty second conference with my business partner (Lucy), we decided we needed to get her a ticket, so we went to the window and hooked her up and got on the bus to Puno. It's crazy that for 25 sols (about $8) you can help someone out so much...it's not that she was thanking us profusely or anything; honestly I think she really just didn't know what to say because she was surprised and relieved, but I just can't imagine being with a baby in a bus station when you have somewhere to get to and no way of getting there. As you can see from the map above, Puno is just southeast of Cusco and right across the lake from Bolivia.
The bus ride was totally gorgeous--mountains, pastures with grazing cows and sheep, and farmed squares of land that made the landscape look like a patchwork quilt. While most of the ride was sunny and beautiful, we got to Puno in the pouring rain and took a taxi to a hostel in the guidebook. It was literally a house with two or three rooms for guests, but there were only two other people staying there at the time, one of which was a guy from New Rochelle whom we had met in the hostel the first night we were in Cusco...so weird. Not only had he gone to college with a close friend of mine, he had also gone to high school with a family friend I've known my whole life. Traveling makes the world soooooosososososososo small.
The next day we took a bicycle rickshaw to the docks at the lake to take a boat to the Islas Flotantes de los Uros (Floating Islands of the Uros). All I can say about the rickshaw is: wow. So fun/scary/life threatening. yay! We go to the ticket booth to buy boat tickets for 10 sols (about $3) and we turn to get on the boat and see that it is already leaving the docks! The guy on the boat holds out a stick which the dock worker next to me grabbed onto to pull the boat back just far enough for Lucy and I to jump over the two-foot gap between the dock and the departing boat. But we made it! The boat looked older than me, smelling of the leaking gas, its weathered floorboards separated from each other so you could see the boat's motor through the slats. Before we got to the islands, I didn't really know what I was in for. When we had asked around in Cusco, people had seemed underwhelmed and had advised us to maybe choose between the floating islands and the Isla del Sol on the Bolivian side of the lake, but we had time and had decided to do both.
The Floating Islands are a group of 10-20 islands in the lake inhabited by an indigenous Aymara tribe called the Uros. Several centuries ago the Uros lived in what is now Southern Bolivia, the region of the salt flats. When the Incan Empire arose, (Incans were descended from the Tiahuanacos), they expelled the Aymaras from the salt flats. Seeking a place from which they could not be driven, the Uros came north to Lake Titicaca, where they literally constructed islands out of the reeds that grew in the lake, hence floating islands. The islands are three meters thick and are rooted to their spots by about 10-13 stakes that are driven into the bed of the lake. Each island has anywhere from 30-100 inhabitants as well as its own unique culture. Electricity was introduced to the islands in the 1990's and the primary income of the islands is fishing, still performed in traditional boats made from the reeds with traditional fishing nets. The islands are constructed from the top down, so as the lower reeds rot they are replenished with new ones. All structures on the islands are made from the reeds, from boats to houses, although now additional building materials such as plastic and tin for roofs are brought from the mainland.
These islands are just as amazing as they sound; we couldn't believe that people had told us they were just so-so. At the island we went to there were people selling beautiful crafts from the reeds, such as mobiles and hangings, as well as weavings and fabrics. On the second island we went to, at which we arrived by a traditional boat, they had created a sunken part in the middle of the island to have a pond for trout. For 6 sols, Lucy and I got a plate with fresh trout, rice and vegetables...mmmm.
After almost missing our bus, we boarded in the afternoon to cross the border into Bolivia. The process was pretty stressful, as the laws were changed a month ago making it so that US passports required a $100 visa and a whole bunch of documents that didn't end up mattering at all...what sucked the most was that I had brought my israeli passport expressly for this purpose, but it had been stolen. Cool.
But c'est la vie, and $100 later we were in Bolivia!
To see photos from both the Floating Islands and Bolivia, click on the link below:
Islands That Float, Islands of Sun