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Other entries in Lake Titicaca

Local Interactions

After an 8 hour bus journey helped along by watching my rip off copy of the Sex and the City Movie (all of 75 pence from Cuzco's dodgy local market for local people which we managed to stumble across just before leaving) we eventually made it from Cuzco to Puno which is a fairly unprepossessing town situated on Lake Titicaca. Fortunately we only had one night there before setting off onto the lake itself which was fortunate both because the hotel was absolutely freezing, central heating being considered a frivolity in this part of the world even though at night the temperature drops quicker than Jordan's knickers, and also because our room was up 10 flights of stairs on the 5th floor and as Puno is situated just a smidge below 4000 metres altitude it took us approximately 2 hours and a quick stop in an oxygen chamber to get back up to the room every time we went out. I had repeated visions of my lungs bursting clean out of my chest like the poor guy who gets infected by the monster at the end of Aliens.
 
So the next morning we broke the icicles off our eyelashes and shivered our way down to the harbour on (oh but of course) open-to-all-the-elements pedicabs to get on the boat which was to take us on our grand tour of the world's highest navigable lake. That's Lake Titicaca for those of you at the back who haven't been paying attention. The boat was taking us first to the floating Uros Islands which are made entirely out of reeds and are quite a sight. The Uros people have been living this way for centuries, there were 3 islands in the area we visited and and each one has approximately 20-30 people spread between about 6 families and they live in houses made out of Totora reeds on islands made out of Totora reeds. Each island lasts approximately 100 years before they have to build another one. They rot from the bottom up so they keep them going by continually adding new layers of reeds to the top. So basically it was quite something although my question of 'how do they cook without burning the whole place to the, er, water?' was answered by one of the locals pointing to the neighbouring floating island to show us the big blackened patch and burned down kitchen house where one of the inhabitants had evidently done the reed island equivalent of going to bed and leaving the chip pan on. After a lot of fascinated but slightly limited looking around (each island being about the size of a tennis court) we got onto their, yep, you guessed it, Totora reed boat for a punt around that bit of the lake to see where the infamous reeds actually grew. Their offer to let us try them (they are edible and apparently taste like celery) was politely but firmly declined when we realised that the ones they had cut to show and offer us were from the area they'd merrily pointed out as their toilet area about half an hour previously. Every time they need to go they have to get into this little motorboat they keep for the purpose and go about 200 metres across to this big patch of reeds where there's basically a reed platform with holes in it. Kind of makes it obvious what you're doing every time you get into the motorboat 'oh I'm just going, er, over there...'. Nice.
 
So after narrowly avoiding dysentery and getting back onto our own boat we headed for the nearby Llachon peninsula where we were paired off and handed over to our local host families who were to have the dubious pleasure of having us invade their houses for the night. Our host was the very lovely Natalio, his equally lovely wife Lucia and their extremely cute granddaughter Elisabeth. We had not so much a room but the most gorgeous little guest cottage type thing in their garden with a stone archway outside and bourgainvilleas around the door. They fed us copious quantities of food, refused to let us help clean up and punted us out into the garden to sunbathe on wooden benches beside clumps of cala lilies and jasmine. This trip really is just hellish. Muahaha The families did get revenge that afternoon though when we all traipsed up to the main square to meet up and be slaughtered by the locals in a football match and later on that evening when we had to dress up in their traditional garb for our meeting at the community's main house for some traditional Llachon music and dancing. I'm sure the sight of 16 foreigners gasping and wheezing their red-faced and sweaty way around the square and then dressed up in huge pink and blue skirts, hats with pom poms and long black cape type things which made us look like nuns masquerading as clowns was amusing enough for them to make up for having to feed us for a day.  
 
The following morning we set off on the boat again for Isla Taquile which is noted for the fact that all the men there like to knit. Apparently on Lake Titicaca knitting is the equivalent of going to the footy and then getting plastered with your mates. Wouldn't the world just be a better place if it was like that everywhere?! The ride back to Puno across the lake was lovely as the sun was out so we were able to lounge around in the back of the boat and defrost the parts of us that we hadn't been able to defrost for days. It really is an amazingly big lake, when we were crossing it there were long stretches where you can't see any land at all, it's really more like being at sea.

Back to the world's highest hotel room for one more night and again I was surprised we didn't bump into Sir Ranulph Fiennes and his Sherpa on the way up and the following day we got into the bus to leave Peru behind for Bolivia. The Bolivian official in charge of stamping your passport evidently fancied himself as a bit of an anthropologist as every Australian passport got a comment of 'ah Skippy the kangaroo!', every American one got 'George Bush heh heh' and every British one got asked 'English?' and when the answer was invariably yes they got 'God save the Queen!'. However of course it comes to my turn and when asked 'English?' I said 'no, Northern Ireland' ... 'ahhh, bombs!' was the reply. I didn't quite know how to respond to that in case it was really some elaborate ruse designed to catch out potential terrorists trying to get into Bolivia and all I could think of to do was make a noise akin to 'errrumyeahnervouslaugh'. Thankfully he was just displaying yet more of his extensive knowledge of international affairs and he subsequently stamped my passport and sent me stumbling out of the office with a cheery 'welcome to Bolivia!'. Oh yes welcome indeed...

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