Puno and Lake Titicaca

Puno is a small city located in the shores of Lake Titicaca, it is not the prettiest place but it does have some charm. It has a lot of plazas including the principal one where the Cathedral is located...

We always try to go inside to have a look and as we were entering a funeral was just ending. They had a receiving line and the women in traditional clothing all wore black hats, I am assuming their funeral hats...

Offering prayers...

The square...

Some of the older buildings, many shades of blue...

Puno gets most of its tourists coming to tour the lake or as a border crossing to Bolivia, a country that shares the border with Peru around Lake Titicaca...

A pedestrian street in the middle of town lined with souvenir shops and restaurants...

So there is some tourist infrastructure but the town is also very local...

We were both feeling the affects of the altitude here as Puno is over 12,000 ft above sea level so we took it easy and spent time just sitting and watching...

They like their ice cream here...

A procession from the one of the churches, complete with a band...

We were there on a Saturday when the market is held and it was madness...

The streets were blocked off and people everywhere, it was so colourful!

This was not a tourist market, so no souvenirs but plenty of things for the locals to buy...

Party dresses...

School supplies...

Lots of fruit...

The most popular treat seemed to be a cup of jello with whipped cream on the top...

There were hundreds of sellers and shoppers...

And I managed to get it a haircut for less than 3.50! 

Description

Lake Titicaca, straddling the border between Peru and Bolivia in the Andes Mountains, is one of South America's largest lakes and the world’s highest navigable body of water. Said to be the birthplace of the Incas, it’s home to numerous ruins. Its waters are famously still and brightly reflective. Around it is Titicaca National Reserve, sheltering rare aquatic wildlife such as giant frogs.

A view from the top of Puno...

There are many tour boats on the lake...

Here we go for the day...

The lake even though it was quite large was very calm in the early morning...

The lake is full of reeds which the people who live there built floating islands...

We stopped by a number of the islands...

The islets are made of totora reeds, which grow in the lake. The dense roots that the plants develop and interweave form a natural layer called Khili (about one to two meters thick) that support the islands. They are anchored with ropes attached to sticks driven into the bottom of the lake. The reeds at the bottoms of the islands rot away fairly quickly, so new reeds are added to the top constantly, about every three months.This is especially important in the rainy season when the reeds rot much faster. The islands last about thirty years.

They also build these weird looking boats from the reeds, the green one was our ride between the islands...

The president of the island welcoming us and explaining their customs...

The people are the Uro or Uros who have lived on the 120 or so floating islands on the Lake for many generations.The larger islands house about ten families, while smaller ones, only about thirty meters wide, house only two or three families. 

Some of the people on the islands...

This young woman was a natural leader, she invited us in to her home and spoke to us in Spanish about her life...

The children were adorable...

Doing a performance for us...

While we were rowing between the islands these children entertained us in many languages...

The lake is very crowded and reminded us on Inle Lake in Myanmar, it was low season so it must be crazy in high season. It makes me wonder just how many visitors this place can sustain before irreparable damage is done.

The Andean people believe that Lake Titicaca is the birthplace of the Incas so it is considered a very spiritual place. The lake is huge being 190km long with an area of 8300 square Kms. So after leaving the islands we motored further out...

We sat in the top of the boat chatting with a family from Chile using Google Translator and a young engineer from Ecuador also helped with translating the conversation. It was a wonderful experience as we find the people we meet are all very interested to know about life in Canada. 

Lots of tour boats...

And people fishing...

Our next stop was Isla Taquile where the town is located at the top of the island via over 500 steps, neither of us were feeling great so we stayed at the bottom and enjoyed the views from there...

Some of the local people...some of the women here wear a black shawl to cover their heads...

Houses built into the side of the hills with terraced gardens... 

We then sailed into very heavy seas on our way back across the lake to Puno...

By this time Don was really sick and spent his last two days in Peru in bed. We called Peru...” The Beauty and the Beast!” It was a beauty of a country to behold but a beast to us when it came to our health. We remarked that one or the other or both had not been feeling well since we came to this country. We don’t know if it was just altitude sickness or we picked up some other bug. Even given this we thought Peru was one of the most majestic countries we have visited and would definitely recommend it as a destination.

This is our last post from Peru, we made our way back to Lima and then an 8 hour flight to Toronto. Our winter holiday was shorter than usual as we needed to be back in Toronto to deal with some personal business that could not be done by distance or online. We are now freezing our butts off in the big city! Thanks for following along!