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- Jun 15, 2018
- ⛅ 13 °C
- Altitude: 4,001 m
PeruPunoYanamayo15°49’46” S 70°2’14” W
Lake Titicaca
June 15, 2018 in Peru ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C
From La Paz we headed to Lake Titicaca with Bolivia Hop. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigational lake in the world. It is situated at 3800m above sea level. We got the bus to the Strait of Tiquina, at the south of the lake. We had to remove all of our belongings from the bus and travel across the strait on a small motorised boat while the bus got a wooden barge across the strait. Then we reloaded the bus again before driving another hour to the town of Copacabanna. We had heard that there was a cafe in Copacabana that served Barry's Tea and soda beard from other Irish travellers along our travels so this was the first place we searched for in Copacabana. El Condor and the Eagle Cafe is owned by a Cork man who moved over to Boliva eight years ago to marry his Bolivian wife and they set up the Irish cafe. It was the best and only soda bread I've had in the last four and a half months.
From Copacabana we got a slow boat to the largest island on Lake Titicaca; Isle de Sol. We walked around the island for an hour exploring and some of the Inca's temples. We watched as donkeys carried luggage up to the plaza square from the port. From Copacabanna Rob and I headed across the border to the town called Puno on the Peru side of the lake while the girls stayed an extra night in Copacabana. In Puno there was two parades going on in the street. The first one was to celebrate the world cup where young children were dressed in the Peru colours and shaking red and white pom-poms, they were very cute. The second one was a parade organised by the local university. Each department were dressed up in different costumes to represent their department including the maths, civil engineering and physics department.
From Puno, after meeting back up with Una and Eadaoin, we went to see the floating islands. This islands are habitated by the Uros community and their islands are formed by reed roots and covered with more reeds. These islands float for thirty years before the community has to remake a new island to live on. There are five families living on each island so they need to use boats to visit other islands for the local school and market. One family showed us their craft-work and some songs they knew in English and Spanish before they gave us a ride on their reed boat.
Then we went to Amantani island to meet Adrian who was going to let us stay in his house for the night. His wife made us lunch which was a plate if potatoes and fried cheese. The community are vegetarians and rear sheep and cows on their lands for wool and milk purposes. The island is very basic as they use horses for transport but they make electricity from solar energy which is cool. We noted that their carbon footprint is so minimal compared to our own. We walked to the top of the mountain on the island to the local Inca temple to watch the sunset which was very pretty before having a delicious stir-fry dinner. After dinner the community organised a dance for us so we got dressed up in their local dress and danced in cycles to the local music. We had a lot of fun and were disappointed when the evening ended as we wanted to continue dancing.
The next morning after our breakfast of pancakes we sadly said goodbye the Adrian and his family before heading the the nearby island of Taquille. We hiked again to the top of the island to view the beautiful Lake Titicaca and visit another community. We saw them knitting hats, bags and waistcoats in multiple colours. We learned that if they wear a hat that contains two colours then they are single however if they wear a hat with only one colour then they are married. After lunch we headed back to Puno to get our overnight bus to Cusco. Lake Titicaca was very pretty and it was nice meeting the local communities however we are glad to be heading to a lower altitude so that we can breath a little bit easier.Read more
