Lake Titicaca

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We spent a day out on Lake Titicaca visiting two islands, Uros and Taquille. Lake Titicaca is the world's highest navigable lake. After a half hour sail from Puno we docked alongside Los Uros, a floating island made from totura reeds. We were shown how large sods of turf are joined together and then anchored to a depth of 20 metres in the lake bed. Totora reeds are then laid across the turf in a criss cross fashion to leave a spongy springy surface to walk on. The families here live in houses made from the reeds but connected to an electricity supply. They farm a supply of fish and also eat the totura reed itself, which we tried and it has no real distinct flavour. The main source of their livelihood is of course tourism and to this end the village of Winaytotora felt a bit like a Folk Park. After this we sailed on for another two and a half hours to Taquille Island where about 4,000 people live surviving on farming, fishing and the revenue from tourism.

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