Advertisement
Published: February 16th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Hotel: Sonesta Posada del Inca Lake Titicaca (Puno, Peru) $65 Yesterday was pretty much a down day for us; we had been hitting the sights pretty hard for the past week and needed a day to relax. The altitude was a convenient excuse for not getting up to too much! We did go into town for a few hours and wandered around the markets, buying a few blankets and other souvenirs. It was NYE and the locals were selling bags of confetti, charcoal, and other festive items. Most Peruvians celebrate NYE with their families, rather than out in the streets. It was a pretty uneventful NYE, we were still feeling a bit under the weather. There was a good fireworks show out over the lake as the clock struck midnight.
We felt much better this morning, and decided to go for a day trip to Taquile island in the middle of Lake Titicaca. I had been to Puno and Taquile previously in 1998. We had wanted to actually spend the night out on one of the islands, as it is very peaceful once the daytrippers have left, but because of our rest day we only went for the day ourselves.
Most of the boats leave the Puno harbor around 7-8:30 AM and return late in the evening. You don't need to book a tour, just show up at the boat dock and someone will find you! The boats will stop at the Uros floating islands along the way. Take plenty of sunscreen and water, the boat trip is 2.5+ hours each way to Taquile! The Uros islands seem to be much more touristy than they were even just 7 years ago, there are several permanent structures now. Most islanders still live in the reed huts on the floating islands, although some now even had satellite TV hookup, this seemed a bit out of place! You can take a ride in a reed boat around the islands for about a dollar. Our next stop was Taquile Island, a high rocky island in the middle of the lake. Luckily the boats came in on the sloped side of the island, which is an easy walk to the top. The other side of the island is a cliff with 500 steps, much easier going down than up! There were signs of the previous nights festivities everywhere, with confetti all over the ground and boats. Most of the natives keep traditional dress, and electricity was only introduced here within the last 10 years. Many of the islanders now earn money from tourism, either operating the boats, or selling locally made clothing. We had a delicious lunch of local fish in one of the restaurants. Back on the boat for the ride back to Puno, on arrival we went to the bus station to book our tickets to Cuzco the next morning. We also found an internet place that could download our memory cards onto CD; my wife was photo happy in Peru and had already filled up our cards!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.206s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 16; qc: 88; dbt: 0.1312s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb