Well, I don’t think I’ve ever had an experience like we’ve had thus far in Puno\Lake Titicaca. We arrived at the Puno bus station around 8 PM. They had a van ready for us to take us to the ‘port’ where our host was to meet us with his boat. The drive to the port was about 10 to 15 minutes. At some points, I thought our driver was taking us out where no one was to execute us…dirt road, nobody around, etc.. Finally he turns down a narrow road that goes down to a very small boat launch where a few boats looked they have come to die. Anyway, no one is there. I’m thinking if this driver leaves us here and our host never comes, this will be our final resting place. Anyway, our driver stays with us and eventually we see a small light coming up a channel in the water. Now, there are no lights anywhere around us. Really dark. Our host pulls up in a fairly small boat with a small motor on it. It does have a cover that people can sit under. We load our bags on, strategically position us by weight and off we go. He is at the back of the boat.navigating using the motor. Every so often, he stops, pulls the prop out of the water, clears it off, and then restarts the engine. I think it was so shallow and there are reeds everywhere that he must be picking some of those up. Now it is dark, it is cold and this guy is navigating through channels of water with tall reeds on the side. He has to go slow. Eventually we get out to a bigger body of water and he can go a bit faster. To get to this water took about 10 minutes then we were on the water for another 10 minutes until we arrived at the BnB. When you get off the boat, you step on to a floor of reeds….I’m sure the whole island is made up of reeds that keeps it afloat. They are a bit we and squishy. You can see huts to the right and then a few small buildings to our left. So we take our gear to the first room. It is there we find out he only has 2 rooms even though we booked 3. Turns out he over booked and someone is in the third room. So the Hayden’s and Smith’s volunteered to share for the night. One of them will get the third room tonight as those folks are leaving I guess.
Our room is very nice and clean. To get heat, as it is very cold, we have one of those tall outdoor space heaters that you see at restaurants. It says clearly on it….Only use outdoors!….but I guess he did not get that message. Anyway, he fired it up for us to get our room warm. It worked great. But this morning, I got it started and it just goes out after a few minutes. Oh well, I’ll speak with him. The toilet here is a camping toilet basically and after you go you cover what you donated with some form of ‘kitty litter’ as it is only going into a plastic bag. I feel sorry for the Hayden’s and Smith’s having to share that. Our bed is very large. And when you pull back the covers, I think there are about 7 very thick blankets that combined probably weigh 10 pounds on you. We did sleep warm however as we turned the heat off per his instructions. There is no electricity to the Uros floating islands. So batteries are used. I have no idea how long they are good for or how they are recharged. But that is what is used. I had my phone plugged in all night….but it did not charge. So it is charging using one of my bricks. Cell coverage seems to be average out here. But I’m not sure it will be enough band width to do our Covid Antigen test that we need to get done before we fly Saturday night\Sunday morning. We’ll see.
Our hosts name is Joel. I think Marc had indicated that we might need dinner. So his wife had prepared a nice chicken dinner with French fries that we ate once we were settled in. After eating, we went to our rooms and went to bed. It was after 10 PM by then.
Waking up this morning, it was cold. I did get the furnace thing going for a bit and then it just goes out. I think it is low on fuel. But the view out of our bedroom is pretty amazing of other floating islands and the lake, or the water way that we find ourselves in. But laying here, I’m wondering what activities we will do today. I think our host will give us a boat tour of the Uros floating islands. But that might be it. We shall see. It’s going to be interesting.
We just returned from a boat tour of Uros…the community of floating islands. There are 2000 people that live on these islands. Only families from generation to generation can have an island in this community. All the islands in Uros are for tourism. There are other islands outside of Uros that are not for tourism. But there are restaurants, gas stations, little stops and so on. Each island is decorated a little different and obviously they all have boats. The channel we are on is about 30 meters deep (100 feet). Lake Titicaca is hundreds of meters deep in places….much deeper. The islands are anchored so they don’t move and the foundation is about a meter of reeds. The reeds are alive even though they’ve been cut and the bind together to become strong. The reeds on top have to be replaced every 15 days in locations where we walk. And once a year, men come and lift the little houses we are on to put need reeds underneath them. For those that live here, living is free….they have the sun for power, they have the water for all kinds of needs and so on. I asked our host if he ever wanted to leave here. He said yes but that it is to expensive to go live in the mountains when life here is basically free. I asked his wife if they ever use the rooms that we are in to sleep in. She said no. Too big. She said their small huts are warmer and sleeping in the reeds as their mattress is much more comfortable. And their huts are pretty small. They wash their clothes in the lake. We saw a man bath with lake water. Just a simple different life. Yet they have set their rentals to be as American as possible. They have electricity (from a battery), hot water in showers and running water (from the lake). All good.
Breakfast was really yummy. Egg fritata with avacodo and tomatos. We had bread, fresh fruit, hot chocolate, teas (for high altititude). Pretty good. Later, we hung out until about 11 AM and then we headed over to go on our tour. The ladies of the island met us with native clothing that they wanted us to use while we rode around Uros. Then they rolled out things they wanted to sale us. We bought a few things. They did not give discounts. I don’t think it was too cheap either. But whatever. In the end, we did not leave until 1 PM to do the tour. Now we are back just lounging around. Dinner is going to be at 6 here on their island.
Tomorrow we leave at 10 AM to get to the port to get into a van that will take us one hour to the Juliaca airport. From there we will leave for Lima at 2:30 PM. We are listed to fly at 12:45 AM in the morning. We’ll see how that goes. At some point, we need to do our Covid test And we are not sure that we have quality enough data download and upload to do video. I might try the test tonight since I can do it 3 days out. We shall see.
Pictures:
Our bathroom on the floating island. I’m really wondering if there is hot water for the shower.
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