Advertisement
Published: August 7th 2007
Edit Blog Post
The Lonely Planet describes Lake Titicaca as 'the world's highest navigable lake' in the Peru section and then goes on to say 'Lake Titicaca is often wrongly described as the World's highest navigable lake' in the Bolivia section. Whatever the case may be they forgot to mention Copacabana (one of the Lake's towns) is Bolivia's answer to Brighton. Everyone flocks here for their holidays and hires as paddling swan to 'explore' the lake. After one night there I decided to catch a boat to Isla Del Sol (Island of the Sun), an island at the heart of the Incan culture.
All I can say is either the Incas enjoyed the irony of the name or were eternal optimists because while I was there the sun never showed his face. I did however see rain, hail and snow! I also experience a thunderston that left the island without power!
The following day I decided not to explore the north of the island and instead chose to escape the wet freezing island and head back to the mainland - if only it was that simple!
Our greedy captain oversold tickets to his boat, but using his ingenuity he found a
solution. He took one engine off his boat and put it on his mates, which left us with one each. This may have worked if the lake was calm, but it wasn't even close! As soon as we hit the open water our pathetic engine did nothing against the waves that threatened to topple us so we were forced to turn back. But again our captain found a solution and surprise surprise it was to his advantage again. He dropped us on the mainland a cool 17km away from where we needed to be. In doing so he washed his hands of us, but that didn't help me with my 20kg bag! In the end everything worked itself out and we crammed in 5 vans that took us back, for a price of course.
I didn´t give up on South America´s famed lake and instead chose to explore it from Peru. Travelling to Puno, Peru, revealed another side of South American people - they enjoy a good protest and certainly know how to go about one! They even have groups protesting the protest! Because the protesters had filled the roads with rocks and burning tiers our bus couldn´t pass
and we were forced to walk. Strangely I didn´t feel the least bit threatened, possible because I was so intrigued and too busy taking pictures.
Arriving in Puno was disappointing because the place is a dump. Thankfully I only spent one night there before I started touring three of lake Titicaca´s islands. The first group of islands is now ridiculously touristy, but impressive nevertheless. They are completely man made out of reeds and actually float, thus the name floating island. They were originally build to protect the inhabitants from the barbarism on land, but now they´re mainly a great source of income. You don´t have to look that closely to see the boys wearing Man U shits under their traditional dress and huts that aren´t made of reeds at all, but corrugated iron (of course these aren´t part of the tour).
The next island was far more authentic and enjoyable. Most families don´t have power, use open fires to cook all their meals on and spend their days preparing food. I stayed with a family while I was there which proved really insightful. Their kitchen/dinning room is a mud annex to the house where the woman spend their
days toiling away and breathing in smoke from the open fire. Consequently they all have chronic coughs. The food however is delicious. Everything has a raw earthy taste and I didn´t leave a bite. In the evening I adorned local clothing and danced around a camp fire with all the other tourists.
The following day I left to see the final island. This one is even more traditional. Here everyone follows the historic Quechua way, meaning they don´t even use animals to aid their day to day tasks. One quaint tradition I learnt of takes place when men great each other. Instead of shaking hands they remove coca leaves from their satual and place them in their mates.
When we returned to Puno we all partied ridiculously hard and I ended up spending the entire next day in bed. Pisco Sours need warning labels!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.131s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 60; dbt: 0.0581s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb