Puno & some questionable claims of habitation

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We arrived in Puno after a nice scenic drive along the shores of Lake Titicaca and a trouble free boarder crossing from Bolivia to Peru. It was pretty grey when we arrived compared to the glorious sunshine we'd left behind in Copacabana. After having a little explore we soon realised that Puno appeared to be a fairly grey place all round; compared with the Bolivian side of the Lake it seemed less beautiful and a lot more commercial with Peruvian businessmen intent on making as many Soles as possible from the tourists. The town didn't really have anything of interest and all the activity seemed to be based along the main tourist street which wasn't particularly interesting. The main reason people come here is to visit the Uros Islands (floating reed islands) on the lake so we decided to book ourselves onto one of the many tours on offer for the next day.

The islands and everything on them are completely made of reeds and they are anchored with ropes attached to sticks driven into the bottom of the lake. The reeds at the bottoms of the islands rot away fairly quickly, so new reeds are added to the top constantly, about every three months. There are about 42 islands all together and most are home to 2 or 3 families. We visited one of the smaller islands and were greeted by the family, all dressed in bright knitwear, who lived there. Our guide told us a bit about their day to day life, how they trade goods with people on the mainland (they actually did a role play to demonstrate the process), how they make the islands and build their houses and then we were allowed to look around and poke our noses into their homes. It was quite interesting and the islands were amazing but the whole thing felt very touristy and even exploitative. Our guide kept telling them to sing us a song or stand up and say something to us and it all felt a bit fake. We suspected that they didn't actually live on the islands anymore but on the mainland and just came over everyday to entertain the tourists. After looking around they tried to flog us some souvenirs and then they took us for a ride on one of their boats, also made out of reeds. It was interesting to see and it's incredible how they make the islands and everything on them, but we just didn't enjoy being herded around in a tour group with a load of fat Americans.

The next part of the trip was to an island further into the lake called Isla Taquile, it was basically a much less beautiful version of Isla del Sol so we weren't hugely impressed. I guess if we hadn't have been to Isla del Sol then we may have found it more interesting.

We returned to mainland and to grey Puno for one more night before catching a bus the following day to Cusco. We had spent 7 weeks altogether in Bolivia and we both fell in love with it; perhaps this influenced our initial impressions of Peru. Or perhaps Puno is just gross. !Evo! !Si!

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