When we arrived in Puno after dark, we didn’t have anything at all set up for accommodations. Thankfully the hostess on our bus was able to find us a hotel, get us a deal, and arrange a transfer there. We got all checked in an it was quite nice with big beds and good wifi. We went out to the Pizzeria Trattoria El Fogon for dinner and went through 5 famillia sized pizzas and 3 liter jugs of wine.
Thursday morning was a little bit rough, but we were up early to go out and see the floating reed islands on the lake. This was where we split up a little. Mom, Dad, and Dave were going for the fuller reed island tour and spending a night on an island, while the rest of us were just going for a trip to one island to see what it was about.
Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world at 3,800m and is the largest lake in South America at 8,560km2 (a little bit larger than Lake Athabaska in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan). The lake is also quite pretty and gives a great view of Puno.
The deepest part of the lake is 281m, but in the shallows reeds grow and the Uros (pre-Incan) people built floating islands out of them to live on. This was purely defensive as if threats arose, they could just move their island away from it. This was how they avoided being taken over by the Incans. The island of Uros is just outside of Puno’s harbour, a quick 30 minute boat ride, so we headed there.
We stopped at one island, got a small demonstration of how the island was built, wandered around on it a bit, and were able to buy some crafts.
Then we went on their “Mercedes Benz” boat for a short cruise around the area and a cute little girl sand us songs in Spanish, Spanglish, Spfrench, Spgerman, and Spitalian.
We got to another island where they had cut a bunch of reeds to put as a new layer on top. And guess what, they had a bunch of tourist help.
We pulled about 60m worth of bundled reeds in about 15 trips, and we got paid in a cup of Inca Cola each (kinda like a carbonated banana flavoured pop), which works out to about 1 sole an hour (40¢/hr). After putting a whole new layer on the island, we headed on the boat back to Puno. Since our whole trip went far quicker than expected, we were back at 10:00, and there isn’t too much else to do in Puno. We were trying to walk towards the steam ship SS Yavari which is docked there, and came across a couple coast guard patrol craft and a cutter. Needless to say we got escorted out of the area pretty quick. We took a tuk-tuk back to the Plaza del Armas wandered a bit, and ended up in a restaurant for lunch. The lunch was overpriced, slow, and not that great, but we tried cuy (guinea pig) in 4 different styles.
Nobody was overly happy with their guinea pig, just something to check off the list. They are very fatty, so the deep fried ones turned out better than the others. With not too much else to do, we wandered a bit, saw a square, and arch, a market, then found a restaurant to have a drink or three. Then we went to another bar, and had a few more drinks, and played chinese checkers (Mike won).
We were well on our way by then, and went back to the same pizzeria as the night before and went through two pizzas and two jugs of wine. Then right outside the restaurant we bought alpaca sweaters (well 50/50 blends), while being in poor shape. We wandered back to the hotel grabbed our bags, cabbed to the bus depot and took our night bus to Cusco.
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