Peru Trip Day 12 - Lake Titicaca & the Uros Islanders

Tour of Peru

June 15-28, 2010

I figure that the easiest way to document this trip is to start from their itinerary and add my own comments, observations, and pictures. My stuff is in black.  Theirs is in blue.

Day 12/June 26: Board a boat to cruise on spectacular Lake Titicaca.  Go to the floating reed islands of the Uros Indians, who created these man-made islands centuries ago to live on in order to escape the warfare throughout the area. 

Then experience Taquile Island, a remote surviving center of Incan culture.  (It is also in this area around Taquile Island that there have been numerous sightings of UFOs, which are sometimes said to immerse themselves deep within the water.)  You will enjoy the exhilarating feeling that emanates from this sacred lake.  A soothing and nurturing sense envelops people here, which is a wonderful way to culminate this part of your spiritual odyssey.  Brief meeting with Gregg.

This part of the trip was the highlight as far as I was concerned!  Our hotel overlooked Lake Titicaca.  My room was on the sunrise/lake side of the hotel – others were on the “eclipse” side of the hotel.  (There was a lunar eclipse the night we arrived.  I did not see it, being on the wrong side of the hotel and also because no one seemed to know exactly when it was going to take place.)  Just before sunrise, you could look out and see small boats being rowed standing up into the reed areas.  Also ducks and mud hens.  From the dining room there was a vista of the lake which included a herd of llamas and a lot of birds in trees.  Beautifully abundant.

The Uros Islands are floating islands – the Uros cut chunks of dirt with the roots of the reeds and reeds still growing on them.  When they are cut loose from the mud, they float.  If you rope a bunch of them together, you get a floating island!  Then they cut the reeds and keep piling cut reeds on top as the lower layers decay into the dirt underlying the islands.  The boat structures are Phoenician in character and apparently Thor Heyerdahl got his reeds from Titicaca for his famous reed boat!  When you step from the boat onto the island, it is like stepping onto a floating dock.  The island “gives.”  Plus the reeds underfoot and a bit squishy as well.

Floating Island on Lake Titicaca, Peru.

They make decorative structures out of the reeds, too.  We were shown the basics of how they create the islands, the houses, and the boats.  To be considered a man, a boy has to demonstrate that he can build an island, a house, a boat, and can fish.  He is then considered to be a man and able to marry since he can provide for his family.  (We didn’t find out what a woman has to be able to do to be considered a woman…)


Here is a two-burner stove.  Potatoes on the left, water on the right.  Don’t know if this is supposed to be a kid’s playground or whether it might serve some actual look-out function.  This was not on the island we visited, but we saw it when we took the “boat ride” around the islands.

"Two-burner" Cook Stove on a Floating Island.

 

Look Out Tower?

 
The following picture shows one of our Australian travelers rowing while the official rower looked on.

Then we got back on our speed boats for about an hour’s ride to Tequile Island.  It is a mountain sticking out of the water, so again we got to climb…  (The mountains don’t look very high because they are only a few thousand feet above the water level.  But you forget that the water level is actually around 12,000 feet!)


On Taquile Island, we went to a “restaurant” about half way up the mountain.  It consisted of one long trestle table with benches on either side and a tarp canopy above for shade.  The choices were trout – caught from the lake! – or omelet.  Their idea of an omelet was to beat the egg up and cook it flat like a pancake, with nothing in it.

I had trout.  I suspect pan fried, but don’t know what oil they used.  It was nice and crisp but not at all dried out.  Served with plain boring white rice and a few French Fries made from incredibly yellow potatoes.  (The omelets came with those two “sides” as well.)  All preceded by a quinoa soup which was very good and bread and “salsa” which we were warned not to eat “no matter how good it looks or smells!”  (And it did look and smell good…  But the bread was good by itself, too.)

After the meal, they entertained us by dancing.  The second dance was a traditional dance done at wedding feasts and we were warned that after they had danced, they would be seeking partners from our group:
 

Traditional Wedding Dance.

The lady in pink dancing with the small child is my roommate, Louise.  Men (and boys) whose hats are all red are married.  Men whose hats have a white portion are single.