I See Your Titicaca

Puno seems like an okay city, but no one goes to Puno for Puno. You go to Puno to see the worlds highest navigable lake at 3,810m, Lake Titicaca (tee hee). It sounds like an 8 year old’s toilet joke but it means “puma stone.” Incan mythology assigns the heavens to the condor, the earth to the puma and the underworld to the serpent.

We were out the door at a reasonable human hour for once and shepherded into our limos. A series of bicycle taxis were waiting to whisk us around the traffic through the narrow streets of historic Puno down to the port of Lake Titicaca. Our driver had music pounding out of his phone speaker and it felt like we were in some manic soundtrack.

The lake itself was a deep reflective blue mirror, at least until all the tourist boats started pouring out of the marina. It gave the sense of being at the ocean, much like the Great Lakes do, except we could see the snow caps of Bolivia off in the far distance. Flightless Titicaca grebes ran across the surface of the lake.

Our first stop on the trip was to meet some of the Uros people who live on floating islands in the middle of the lake. The Uros people took to creating islands from totora reeds during the time of the Incas to attempt to escape conflict and slavery. There are now over 60 man-made islands in the lake. 

The islands are made by cutting large chunks of reeds and their rootpads and severing those roots from the bottom of the lake. These chunks are tied together to be allowed to grow together. More reeds are then piled on top until they add at least another 2 metres and even more are piled up where houses and kitchens will be placed. All the structures on the islands are made of totora reeds and they are edible as well. They contain fluoride so they clean teeth as they are chewed. The entire community works together to build and maintain their island home. New reeds need to be added every few months and the islands only last so long before they rot and have to be abandoned for a new island.

Our boat pulled up and we were greeted by a receiving line in their traditional colourful garb. They said “Kamisaraki” in Aymara and we replied “waliki.” They showed us how they made their island and each person showed us their spouse and their house on the island. We were invited to look inside and to buy some of their homemade handicrafts before going out on their reed boat. The lady who took us to her house just giggled when asked about her spouse but we found him in the bed when she showed us the house. When we passed the house during our reed boat tour he was lying facedown in the garden. Methinks he may have indulged too much last night.

Next we were off to a natural island, Taquile, which is a UNESCO protected site. It received that designation because the men of Taquile are brilliant knitters. They start as young boys and must be able to knit a tight waterproof cap in order to be allowed to marry the girl of their choice. The women dye the wool, do the weaving and make incredibly intricate belts for the men and boys. They gave us descriptions of the role of knitting in the culture, some demonstrations of washing wool with a saponic plant and dragged us into some folk dancing. Once again crafts were brought out for us to buy. Their knitting is highly prized so I bought a reversible llama hat and some seriously tacky gloves.

Taquile has some beautiful sandy beaches so we wandered down, but only the Canadians braved the chilly Lake Titicaca waters. Shoes off, pants rolled up and run!

Our next stop was lunch at a village on the peninsula. This village takes in people for rustic home stays but we just had a brief stop long enough to eat the ubiquitous potatoes, rice and fried cheese, in my case. We had a brief interlude spent watching a woman chasing a runaway pig. She won in the end.

I was lucky to have a day worth of scopolamine left in my patch so I was okay during all this boating through rough waters but K got pretty sick and had to sit up front and stare at the horizon.

To cap off our last day of activities we went to a touristic dinner and show buffet and drank our faces off. I am seriously going to miss this crew. They’re pretty funny.