Lake Titicaca

We spent the last 3 days visiting the Uros, Amantini and Taquile islands. Meghan and I headed out a day ahead of Debby and Helen on a boat with 20 or so other Gringos. We made a brief stop on the floating islands of Uros - an interesting community of many small floating islands made of reeds. Sadly to say it is very commercialized and I guess we are partially to blame. Then we were off on our slow chug (3 hours) to Amantini where Meghan and I spent the night with a host family -who fed us in their very modest kitchen, dirt floor and open fire. The islands are very scenic with their cobble walks (no cars), terraced farms and simple life. After a late lunch with our family of soup and potatoes we hiked to the highest point of the island to watch the sunset over the lake... it was a sunset topper! Dinner back at the casa and then they dressed us up in traditional clothes and we were off to the "disco-teca" for some dancing with the rest of the group and some locals. Yes, I danced.

The next day we got back on our boat and chugged over to Taquile, a smaller island that was definitely my favorite of the 3. They seem to be protecting their traditions well despite of the tourism which is mostly a mid-day excursion for lunch. Few folks stay over night on that island (I don't know why) and Meghan and I were the only ones of our group to do so. After a group lunch we said goodbye, met our host family for the night and waited for Debby and Helen to arive on another boat from Puno.

After about 3pm the tourist crowd died down, the trinket shops and sidewalk vendors closed up and we had a great time exploring the island. Marco Antonio - 13 old son of the family we stayed with, gave us a private tour to the Incan ruins and temple at the highest point of the island. The walks are all lined by stone walls that have been in existence for ever and the views were georgous. Snow peaks across the lake to Bolivia were hard to keep your eyes off every time they came into view. There was a festival in the main plaza that day and you could hear the music from most places on the island, we stopped by after our hike and felt as though we were special guests on the island (I only saw about 10 other tourists there). Omlette and rice dinner and we were off to early bed after looking at the stars which were amazing - a benefit of the thin air at this altitude.

This morning we had breakfast on the patio overlooking the lake and peaks of Bolivia and then spent a couple hours walking the islands many paths and stumling on a few temples and Incan ruins with no-one around other than the locals. Back on the boat after lunch and we arived in Puno around 4. Will post some more pics soon, ther are a bunch but it was hard to set my camera down!