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Puno, Peru
15° 49' S 70° 1' W
Jan 08, 2006 00:40
Distance 0km

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Dissapointment In Puno

Text written in: English

We had heard great things about Puno and Lake Titicaca, see the floating islands! visit indigenous folks who live like no-one else, and have never seen tourists! stay with an actual indigineous family in their hut! These are things we heard, and other than the altutude sickness we were pysched to be blown away by our experience on sunday morning.

Sunday morning arrives and we get into a tourist bus to head to the docks.We took a circuitous route to the docks where we boarded a small and slow passenger boat which punted out of the dock and onto lake titicaca. We slowly made our way from Puno harbour to the floating islands. During the way we couldnt help but notice how small the lake seemed.

The floating islands are basically man-made islands, that are constructed entirely with reeds and rope. Indigenous people live on these things which are about two basketball courts in size, with about 8-10 other families in tiny huts. There are many islands tied together which form a whole community of islands in the middle of the lake. The islands only last 8 years so the only real permanant structures there are the school (on concrete pillars) and the hospital (which still has no doctors). It was interesting to see, but after a brief speil, you are invited to buy, buy, buy! Which actually ends up being the bulk of your time on these islands. Needless to say I was a little dissapointed.

After the floating islands we embarked toward another island where Indigenous peoples supposedly had been keeping the same customs for thousands of years. I was excited, plus we then realized that the reason that we thought the lake was small was because we were in a tiny and slightly enclosed part of the lake, when we got into open water it was a magnificent sight. The journey to this other island Taquille took a few hours, but we were excited to see this unique and isolated place.

When we arrived at Taquille we began hiking up the island toward the town center, and immediately we were hounded by indigenous folk selling us there various wares. In plaintive voices we heard: ¨1 sole, you buy!¨ But it wasnt just the people who were selling things that wanted money, every single person on the island seemed to be trying to get as much as they could from tourists. I took a picture of a cow, and the shephard nearby demanded payment. Now I don't blame these people for attempting to coerce as much as they can from the gawking idiots who wander through their town, but this kind of behaviour seemed revolting to me, it wasnt just that it existed, but the way it presented itself made me hate the place. It did not help that once we got to the center of town there was nothing to do but sit there and maybee look into the church where a white priest led indigenous peoples in prayer. Needless to say, we were incredibly dissapointed.

On the long ride home, 3 hours, we discovered that we had paid nearly twice as much as what some others had paid to go on this tour. Furhter, we realized that the guy who had sold us the tour had taken advantage of the fact that we were tired, sick from altitude, and tourists to get a handsome fee out of us. By the end of the ride we were disgusted.

We had come to Puno expecting an incredible experince, instead, we got an overpriced tour, and a lesson in saying yes too easily. Puno sucks, lake titicaca is beautiful and worth seeing, but see it from the Bolivian side, from Copacabana, which is cheaper and a nicer city.