24th February 2015 – Puno and Lake Titicaca

Today we woke up early and saw the sunrise over Lake Titicaca from our hotel room. The sun shining through the cloud cover was very dramatic over the lake. Michael was very kind and pulled back the drapes so I could stay in bed and still see the sunrise.The hotel we’re staying in is out on an island that you reach via a causeway and our room looks out to the floating reed islands it’s magnificent. Around the grounds of the hotel are plenty of alpaca and lots of guinea pigs. In fact they have guinea pig on the menu, not that either of us tried it last night.    We are able to have a leisurely morning and catch up on some domestic duties as our tour guide is picking us up at 9am to take us out to Uros the floating islands.As we enter into the oval where the 80 islands are we are allocated an island that we must visit, this ensures that all islands get an equal number of tourist boats visiting each week. Each island supports about 4 families and they rely on the tourist money to live. They fish and grow some vegetables and make handcrafts which they take into Puno to barter for other food they need. We are given a talk on the history of the floating islands and how when the first people came looking for somewhere to live, they built boats out of the reeds and lived on them until they discovered that the reeds float.  We are given a demonstration of how the islands are constructed with the reeds and the roots and how they lash the clumps of floating reeds together and tether them to the floor of the lake to stop them floating away, it’s very interesting. They build huts out of the reeds where they sleep and they cook outside.  There are quite a few young children on the island that we are visiting. We are taken in groups of 4 into one of the little huts they live in. The one we go into has a double bed mattress along one wall and lots of pegs around the walls to hang clothes on with 1 electric bulb hanging from the middle of the roof which is powered by a solar panel and that’s it. They give Sue and I a skirt and jacket to put on then the young girl showing us around starts to dance with us.  They have a little market area set up where we can buy some artifacts and souvenirs that they’ve made. They have a reed boat tied up to the island and for 10 soles (US$3.30) each we are rowed to the capital island where there is a cafe and a much bigger market of items they’ve made. On the way 3 of the young children entertain us by singing songs, then they pass their hat around. Although it’s very touristy the inhabitants of these islands (2,000 people) rely on this money to buy the things in Puno that they can’t barter for.There is a school on one of the islands that the Primary aged children attend.  It has a yellow corrugated iron roof, not a thatched roof like the huts.  When they go to High School and University they have to go into Puno each day.After lunch we drive into town to have a look around, buy some food & water and petrol so we’re all set for tomorrow. At this stage we don’t have any insurance cover for our cars in Peru, so Carlos our guide takes Michael & Ross into town to an insurance company and they organise insurance for all 8 cars at a cost of 60 soles for 1 month per car, which is US$20, cheap enough. Petrol here cost us 10.50 soles per US gallon which is 2.63 soles per liter or 88 US cents per litre so it’s cheaper than Argentina.  Sunset over the lake from our hotel room tonight was just lovely with the clouds giving off a soft pink hue.