Puno & Lake Titicaca

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After a couple hours sleep, I was up and away to explore Puno. For the past 2 days I have been going solo as Dave was confined to bed with a combination of severe viral flu and altitude sickness. Today he went to hospital to get releif.... oxygen for 3 hours and a massively long needle stuck in the butt with penicillin seems to have done the trick!

At 3800m, Puno is situated on the shore of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigatable lake in the world. The first thing I did was head for the Condor statue on the hill above for a view of the city. There were sooooo many steps, I figured it would be good preparation for the Inca trail. The view was amazing. I then wandered around the streets soaking up the atmosphere. Puno is a very vibrant city, and the main pedestrian street, known as gringo central, is bustling with shops, restaurants, and walking vendors trying to sell their wares. The main mode of transport around this city is by tricycle-taxi. They're everywhere from the basic rust heap to the streamline glitzy models.

In the afternoon I took a tour out to Sillustani on the Lake Umayo Peninsula. This was home to the ancient Colla people, a war like tribe that later became the South Eastern arm of the Inca's. They buried their nobility in impressive funerary towers called Chullpas, the tallest of which is 12m high. It is incredible the methods they used to build such structures from the rock, with such limited tools. There was also evidence of a sun dial which was used for reading the weather patterns, and planning their agricultural crops. We also got the opportunity to go through the living quarters of a typical family, taste their cooking and see how they make their handy-crafts.

Heading out to the peninsula there was plenty of farming. Saw mainly cattle which made a change from the Llama's and alpaca's, which were grazing freely under the watchful eye of someone. In the evenings the cattle are penned up in "paddocks" formed by stone walls.

Today I did a full day tour on Lake Titicaca. 1st stop was at Isla Flotantes, home to the Uros people. They have made their homes on "floating islands" made from the totora reed, found in the shallows of Lake Titicaca. Everything on the island is made from reed. The "ground" is a good 3m thick, and a new layer of reed is laid every 3 weeks as it decays from the bottom. The islands house a number of families (10 on the one we visited), and are staked using tree branches. When they want to move on they lift the branches, float away and then re-stake. If families get sick of each other, they either pick up their house and move to another island, build another island, or just simply cut their island in half and float away! Their only source of food is fish, so each day they head to the mainland to sell their catch at the markets, and then purchase other essential food items before returning.

Following a short ride on their reed boat, we jumped back onto modern technology and motored 24km out to Isla Taquile. This island is 1km wide and 7km long and has been inhabitated for many thousands of years, with daily life still carried out the traditional way. We had a 2km walk, rising another 200m, to reach the town plaza for lunch and view their handi-craft. The man-knitted hats seem to be the main attraction here. These people are completely self-sufficient with animals grazing sparse grasses, and crops grown using the old manual cultivation techniques.

Cruising on the beautiful blue coloured lake surrounded by majestic mountain peaks made for a very relaxing day. In many cases tipping the locals for taking their photo is a requirement, and often when eating, they play music and then pass the hat around. I guess tourism is helping to sustain their old ways, which would otherwise die out in modern society.

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