Lake Tititaca

I got picked up from my hostal around 6:45am and we went down to the port where the boat was waiting to take us out to the islands of Lake Tititaca. Again we had a mixture of people on the boat. Some people were from Australia, the UK, Brazil, Germany, Belgium, and the US. It was fun to hang out with the people. I spent most of my time with the people from the UK and the US. It was really neat to meet them.

Our boat went very slowly out into the lake and about a half hour after we left we arrived at the Uros Islands. These islands are ´floating´ islands that the native people build. The island we visited was the flamingo island. They take reed roots and cut them up in squares and tie them together. Afterwards they cut reeds from the water and place them on top of the reed squares. This creates a boyant island that they literally live on. They even cut sections off of the islands if the people who live on those sections are bad. Quite the way to solve problems. Sometimes, I think that would be nice in the USA.

After a demonstration by the President of the island, they passed around the reeds and we were told that they eat the white ends of the reeds. I assume that they are full of fiber, something I have been told is important in my diet by my mother. I tried it and really it wasn´t that bad. After the demonstration we could explore the island. I bought two gourd bird figurines which are pretty cool. They look like the birds that they eat on the island.

Afterwards, I paid 10 soles to take a ride on a traditional reed boat. Before we left on the boat ride, the women of the village sang us a couple of songs. One was a traditional Uros song, and one was their rendition of twinkle twinkle little star. It wasn´t quite the melody I was use to, but it was nice. The boat ride was really pretty fun. Then we got back on our motor powered boat to head out to a ´real island´ Isla Taquile. Before we could go out on the main water though, the captain had to stop the boat and clean off the prop from the reeds. It reminded me of when we have to do this up north on the lake. We always call it salad and the prop salad shooter. It was funny to see that they deal with ´salad´ all over the world.

At that island, I had lunch --- a traditional omlet with fried patatos and we saw traditional songs and dances of the people. We also learned about their clothing. Their clothing has a lot of meaning. Single males wear stocking caps that are partially red and partially white. Married men wear all red stocking caps. The women are differentiated by the size of their pompoms on their sawls. The larger the pompoms the longer they have been married. If they aren´t married their pompoms are very small.

After Taquile Island, we got back on the boat and took an excruciatingly slow ride back to port. It easily took over 3.5 hours and the boat just puttsed along. A couple times we had to stop because I think the boat was overheating. Not to pleasant. When I got back to land I picked up my bus ticket from my hostel and I went to the bus station where I caught my 10 hour night bus to Tacna, Peru.