Uros Islands

There is an advantage to lots of Americans - decent breakfasts! Sugar puffs, toasted quinoa (yum!), melon, pineapple, cheese toasties, juices and numerous hot drinks. There should have been pancakes as well but the greedy yanks must have gobbled all those!

After a lazy morning, we were picked up in a taxi for our tour to the Uros Islands (25S) and driven to the docks. Our group of 8 boarded the boat, which had bus seats, and drove about half an hour to the islands.

We were dropped off on an island of 4 families. The islands are made of floating reeds and are squishy as you walk - looks and smells of broken up straw.

We had a talk about how the islands are made. There are 86 islands, all very close together so it looks like one big community. There is a school and even a football pitch! Blocks of cork-like roots are towed into place and anchored to the lake bed (~20m deep). The green parts of reeds are laid on top in layers of alternating directions. They then build small huts from reeds on a platform of more reeds. The white bases of the reeds are eaten - we tried some and didn't taste of much. The reeds slowly get mushy and disintegrate so new layers are needed every 15 days.

The group was split up and each couple was shown around a hut. Ours consisted of a bed made from reeds and some llama blankets, a solar panel, radio and tv! Apparently it sleeps 3! Cooking is done separately outside on a large stone so as not to set the whole place alight. Then our lady dressed us up in traditional dress before trying to flog us her handicrafts - Anna relented.

We then paid 10S each directly to the president of our island for a ride on their reed boat. They told us that the reed boats are 'romantic taxis' - couples take them behind the reeds and often 'come back as 3'. The ladies sang some local songs to bid us farewell, including row, row, row your boat. They rowed us part way across the lake and then turned around and dropped us off at another island only a short distance from where we'd started! One of the young boys 'sang' in many different languages to us (but not English) for some pennies. All the other groups we saw were much larger than ours and the boats were pushed along by a small motor boat so I think we were lucky with our tour.

We were dropped off on another island which had lots of other tourists on it and a few small places to eat. None of us were particularly interested and soon got back on the boat and headed home.

We got an ice cream from the place on the corner of our street (2S) which suddenly became rammed with people pushing and shoving - more desperate than me! We wandered around the local area which is pretty nice - not sure why Puno has such a bad rep.

We had some of Anna's new favourite crisps - a mix of cheetos, doritos, plain and bacon - great idea, why don't we mix crisps in UK?? I didn't feel great so had a bath which took forever to get warmish. Anna wasn't hungry so we skipped dinner and watched whatever English progs we could find on our huge tv.Read more