Lake Titicaca

When I was little, I really liked a Disney cartoon where Donald Duck visited Lake Titicaca. I don’t remember much except it was some sort of educational travel themed thing. Anyway, the only reason I wanted to come to Lake Titicaca was because of that cartoon, kind of like the only reason I want to go to Cartagena is because of Romancing the Stone (even though they filmed it in Mexico). So yay, I just did Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world.

Chris and I signed up for a two day tour through our hostel Los Pinos. For about $20 each, we toured three different islands, were fed, and stayed overnight with a host family. Our first sets of islands were the floating islands of Uros. People decided it would be a good idea to build islands out of reeds. They anchor each island to the bottom of the lake (it’s pretty shallow) and each week have to add reeds to the top of the island because it’s constantly broken down by the water. They build their homes and boats out of the reeds as well. I thought the whole thing seemed pretty staged and touristy and we were asked to give little bits of money for everything from a tour of their homes, to paying some kid that sang songs, and paying to ride a traditional boat across the river.

After Uros, we had a long boat ride (we found out later the engine on the boat was a car engine and the only speed was slllllloooooooooooow) to the island of Amantani. This is an actual island (not a reed island) and we stayed the night with a host family. Our host family were potato and vegetable farmers. The husband was 32 and his wife was 36 (but we both guessed her age to be somewhere around 50… but not out loud) and they had three little kids. Grandma and Grandpa lived there as well but we were never introduced. They spoke Quechua at home and Spanish to us so there was never much chance to bond. It was interesting, again, to see how flippin spoiled we are in the States. When I am in situations like this, I just feel like such an asshole. They had no indoor plumbing, no TV, electricity was scarce, the kitchen stove was a fire, no toothbrushes that I could see, and no heating. Everyone wears open toed rubber sandals (causing the most disgusting feet I have ever seen) and have no trouble bounding up large mountains in very high altitudes. There are no cars on the island and everyone exists through farming and tourism. The food served was in small portions and there was lots of soup, but it was good and fresh and homegrown. Meat is scarce so we had lots of potatoes and quinoa and tea with small branches stuck in the cup for flavor (it’s called muna and it’s a kind of mint).

That night the dad dressed us up in their traditional clothes and took us to a little tourist dance at the community center. It was dumb but nice they made the effort. There is no electricity throughout the island at night so flashlights are a must and I have seriously never seen so many stars in my life. The Milky Way was very milky.

The next day we headed to the boat for another island called Taquile. We left our host family our trip snacks and they were super pumped for avocados, bread, tomatoes, and oranges and. Taquile is a communist society, and everyone exists off the same amount of money and resources. All of the prices on the knit goods are fixed and every restaurant charges the same thing and serves the exact same dish… every single day. Boring. The views were excellent and we had plenty of time to make friends with everyone in our tourist group.

I’m sorry we don’t have any photos up from Cusco or Lake Titicaca. We usually upload our photos through Chris’ laptop with a wireless signal. We’ve gone crazy through Puno trying to find a place with WiFi and everyone looks at us like we’re retarded and making up some new word. So hopefully they have fixed the signal at our hostel in Cusco (we’ll be back there on Thursday) and we can get our stuff up then.

So it’s Cusco on Thursday and on Sunday we start our four day hike on the Inca Trail for Machu Picchu. After that, we fly to Lima and then bus it north for the beaches near the Ecuador border and my 29th birthday. Super. Right now, we’re just killing time in Puno… a town you need about half a day to see, we’re stuck in for about four. Good times.