Lake Titicaca

We took a small boat with a group of other tourists on the 8500 square kilometer lake, for about 30 minutes to the Isla Uros (Uros Islands). These many small islands are totally made up of the reed that grows in the lake naturally. The inhabitants float huge pieces of root filled soil and anchor them to the bottom of the lake. They then lay masses of the dried reed on the soil and make themselves their own island to live on. The islands themselves are spongy to walk on due to them only being made from soil and reed floating on water. We got took into one of their houses to be shown some handicrafts and how the locals live. We then got back on the boat for 3 hours to get to Isla Amantani,( a real island, not a floating reed island) where we had our very own local family to stay with for the night. We had our own room there in the house with a 4-5 foot door which was handy to get through at night. They fed us basic food as they dont have meat on the island. Each family may only have up to 15 sheep but when one of the family members is married they kill 5 sheep to eat at the ceremony so they cant eat meat at all. So we had rice and curried veg. We also had peppermint tea, but the peppermint was actually off the bush in twig form, so we had quite a twiggy and leafy cup of peppermint tea. We walked to the highest point of the island to view the scenery of the lake and to watch the sunset. At the night time there were a blanket of hundreds stars out in the sky (too many times on our travels have we seen this that we dont get to see at all in England). We also got dressed up in the local islanders clothes for the ´grande fiesta´ (big party) with all the other families and their adopted tourists. Sam wore a cloth poncho and a hat, but Samantha got the full works, a petti coat, pleated skirt, embroided shirt, waist belt and a shawl. At the party we were dancing with our local family whislt the young boys played local music (drum, guitar, panpipes, wood flute and ukelele) and of course there was plenty of cerveza (beer). The next day we said bye to our family and headed off on an hour boat ride to Isla Taquile. Here the local dress is more or less the same but more plain. The other difference is that single men wore a red and white hat, where as married men wore a stripy one. Single women wore a coloured skirt, where as married women wore a black one. Here on Taquile we walked around the island and learnt about the local traditions and customs before we got back on the boat for the 3 hour ride back to Puno (the city on the Peruvian side as half he lake is also in Bolivia).