Floating Islands and Blockades

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On route home to La Paz we decided to break up the trip with a night in Puno, a town on the edge of Lake Titicaca... admittedly, its not the most exciting stop over, since its a pretty run-down, poor town. But its biggest attraction (which I've been wanting to check out for some time) are the floating islands, a short boat trip away.

There are 42 of these man-made islands and the Uros community decided to create these islands as a way to escape the Incas. The islands are made out of reeds and anchored to the bed of the lake to stop them drifting to Bolivia... not so good when the occupants don't have passports! Apparently the reeds gradually rot and need to be replaced every 30 years. Our tour operator went by South American time and we arrived on an island just after the sun had gone down... not so great for sight-seeing! We wandered around the island and enjoyed the spring of the reeds under our feet. It was a slightly sinking feeling but cushy and relaxing at the same time.

The plan was to take off the next morning back to La Paz... but we woke up trapped. It turns out that there are plans to build a road from Brasil to Peru, but the locals are not happy that the plans have this road go along the other side of the lake away from their city. Plus the price of petrol is increasing. So the whole region has decided to go out in protest by blockade-ing the highway. We wanted to verify the reports so James and I headed out on a rickshaw to check it out. Turns out its true!

We came across rockblocks at various points through Puno, which pretty much meant a line up of bricks and rocks... there was no one attempting to drive, even our rickshaw driver made us walk whenever we came across big groups. It was definitely an adrenaline rush as we were not quite sure how they would deal with two foreigners. But all went fine and we even got a few waves from some marchers.

So after checking out the roadblocks we decided we wouldn't be going anywhere. The rocks the jeep could have handled... but the scary women with sticks that chase you, the men that throw bottles and rocks at cars, the tyres on fire and the marching groups with gunpowder made the decision for us... there was no chance we would be making it to the border! Even if we got out of Puno with all of our windows there were still many more towns to drive through before we reached Bolivia which was 2 hours away. Its definitely a style of protest we don't see much at home! So we pulled out the cards to occupy the time before we could head back to La Paz the next day. Fun times in Puno!

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Comments

[Scotty]

MGPs
Great picture of James and the muy grande pigs!