Lake Titicaca

I apologise in advance for the length of this post. Internet connection points are hard to find on islands with no electricity so there is a bit to catch up on.

We are back in Cusco now at the end of our tour of Peru. Tomorrow we fly to Lima then the next day on to Santiago. We have an afternoon in Lima but we are unsure of what to do with it because we have not met one person (even the people that come from there) with a single positive thing to say about Lima.
Lake Titicaca was a highlight of the trip and well worth the bus trip and other transport dramas.
We traveled to Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca via a nine hour bus ride that was actually quite interesting. The bus stopped at a few sites along the way including a Church of St Peter that had every inch of its interior covered with frescoes and gold leaf. It really was quite spectacular. Another highlight for me was an Inca site with an extensive silo system!
After passing through the highest point of the trip (4200m) we spent about three hours driving through the high antiplano. Completely treeless and at first glance quite desolate. A careful second look however revealed that the landscape was full of people and animals. Huge herds of Llamas and Alpacas were tended by shepherds (mostly women) across the plains and up the sides of the mountains. The people lived in tiny adobe brick houses which blended into the landscape. There were no roads and definitely no electricity. Quite a bleak existence which seemed incongruous with the beautiful brightly coloured clothes that were worn.
Before Puno we passed through Juliaca which is one of Peru’s biggest industrial cities. It was quite a bizarre town to drive through with most business seeming to be done in the open on the verges of or sometimes in the middle of the crumbling roads. Juliaca was obviously a centre for bus repairs and given the massive size of the Peruvian bus fleet we spent what seemed like about 15 minutes driving along a wide road weaving our way through bus after bus in various stages of repair being fixed in the open on the road.
Puno itself was really nothing to write home about with only the very centre of the city being relatively clean and safe and not particularly pretty. The lake however was a different matter entirely.
After a night in Puno we set out on a boat with about 18 others for an overnight tour of the lake and a couple of the islands. The group consisted of Americans, English, Welsh (Welsh first language), Argentineans and some other Aussies. It was great to travel with some other people and it was a fun group who all got on well.
First stop was the Uros floating reed islands. The people of the islands still live in tiny reed huts built on piles of floating reeds. Solar panels give enough electricity for the odd television and other concession to modern life but on the whole they live as they have for many hundreds of years. The other concession to modern life is the boat loads of tourists that they now cater to with slick presentations of island life along with the obligatory handicraft market. Rhiannon made friends with a girl around her age who as result of growing up with boatloads of tourists visiting her everyday was a born performer and spent the whole time parading for the cameras.
Next stop was Amantani Island which had about 4000 inhabitants in small communities around a central mountain. Here we were all farmed off to local families for our overnight stay. While the house itself was very comfortable it was basic living at best with the kitchen consisting of an open fire with a sort of clay oven. The meals that our host produced from this tiny space were amazing with beautifully tasting soup and main dishes seeming to appear from nowhere. Our hosts spoke no English and in fact very little Spanish with Cechwa, the indigenous language of the Incas being the main language spoken on the islands.
We walked up to the top of the mountain in the afternoon and the views were spectacular. Titicaca is truly immense with the snow capped peaks of Bolivia on the other side only just visible. The island itself is very pretty with every inch of the mountain being divided into tiny fields surrounded by stone walls and pathways. The fields were growing crops of corn, wheat, potatoes and beans and the patchwork landscape resulting was spectacular from up high.
In the evening we were treated to a fiesta where local costumes were provided for everybody and the dancing seemed to go forever. A very memorable night and a wonderful island.
The next morning we boated over to Taquile Island, equally beautiful and with the fame of being UNESCO listed for its traditional textile production. We had a long and leisurely trout lunch with the whole group in a little restaurant on a terrace overlooking a steep drop to the lake. We could have easily stayed there all day.
After the beauty and peace of the lake it was a shame to go back to Puno but it was made somewhat better by a very enjoyable dinner with most of the group from the boat. After dinner we were exposed to the more unpredictable side of Peru when we got back to our hotel and were informed that a snap strike had been called by Bus drivers and it was doubtful that we would get out of Puno in the morning. This is where guides come in extremely handy as Paull quickly organized a minibus to get us to Juliaca from where we were flying back to Cusco. The bus was going to have to leave at four o’clock in the morning however as the main road was going to be blockaded by the strikers and we would have to take back roads.
As it turned out when we got up at four the strike had been averted and all the drama of the previous night was for naught. Paull had not wanted to take any risks however as Puno is a hotbed of political discontent with a couple of local mayors killed in the last few years and most strikes seeming to emanate out of there. Paull told us that if he was president of Peru we would give Puno to Bolivia.
So now on to Chile and the next stage of out trip.