After canyon country, we headed to Puno to visit the Lake Titicaca islands. Lake Titicaca
has tourism down pat. From Puno, there are three islands popular to visit, Uros
(the floating islands), Amantaní, and Taquile. Though
there are many tour agencies willing to take you around the islands, the
ferries are also set up for tourism and you can do the exact same route without
a guide for less money and more confidence that the money is going to the
communities. There are three common trips: (1) a day trip just to Uros; (2) a
day trip to Uros and Taquile; and (3) a trip to Uros, an overnight at Amantaní
and home via Taquile. Cole and I opted for the third option, without a guide.
The islands could be a tourism destination all on their own.
Once you get out of the cove around Puno, the water is just gorgeous and the low clouds layered on top of Bolivia’s peaks on top of glistening
blue water is hard to take your eyes off.
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| Lake Titicaca in the morning |
But rather than rely on their beauty alone, the Titicaca
islands have positioned their traditional culture and isolation from globalization
as their top selling point. Uros, in particular, is a really cool glimpse into
a unique culture. Originally, the islands were built to try to isolate the
community from the aggressive Incas and though the island gets some snuff for no
longer being “authentic,” if you just look at it like a Frontier Days kind of culture
show, I still think it’s pretty neat. The floating islands are built from the
totora reeds growing in the shallow part of the lake. During the wet season,
the roots float to the top of the water and the villagers boat out and cut the
roots (which are quite cork like) into blocks, which they then tie together and
anchor in place where they want to live. The island we visited (there are about 60 small community islands) was made of a couple dozen
blocks of various sizes, and even had a net lined hole to store fish in! The
roots are then covered in reeds and houses/benches/boats are made out of the
reeds as well.
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| Uros, the Floating Islands |
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| A demonstration of how the islands are built |
After Uros, we went over to Amantaní for the night. Amantaní
has no hotels or restaurants; everything is done via a community tourism system
with home stays. When the boat arrives, the families who are next in line are
waiting on the dock and every group is assigned to a family for the night.
Since they’ve been doing it so long, it’s pretty mechanized and most houses
have built on additions for tourists (our room was the nicest we’ve stayed in
since leaving San Bartolo). Other than tourism, the only income on the island
is agriculture. We did the two hikes on the island to the two highest points
from which you can see the terracing all the way down to the lake. (There was
also, apparently, a cultural show at night, which we missed because when we
asked our family about it they didn’t think it was happening that night.)
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| Amantani Island, with Taquile in the background |
The next morning was disgustingly cold, but we diligently
got up bright and early to catch the boat to Taquile. To my surprise, Taquile
felt even more touristy than the floating islands. Like Amantaní, the main
industries are tourism and agriculture but it is also famous for handicrafts
and the villagers sell their woven products in a big cooperative store in the
town square. We had about 3 hours to walk around the island—first up the
20-minute staircase and to the town square with all the other hundreds of
tourists, and then we proceeded to get lost on the island trying to escape the
tourist crowds. Luckily a nice old man pointed us up a hill and we wandered
through pastures and up rock faces until we found the trail back to the docks.
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| Brrrrrrrr!! |
All in all, I’m glad we went to see Lake
Titicaca, and I did enjoy the scenery and Uros, but having seen some other things since then, I don’t think Puno will go down in the books as a highlight of the trip.
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