I got into Puno feeling good and met up with to Mexican Canadians who were living in Montreal and were Concordia and McGill students respectively. Puno being a dirty town with nothing ispirational worth seeing in it, we did not do much that first evening, just went out to dinner and talked about Montreal and Concordia mainly, being one of the schools I am interested in. I returned to the hostel early after suddenly feeling tired and drained.
The next day the two Canadians did their one day island trip and I did my 2 day so we separated. I felt pretty weak and in a terrible mood in the morning. The first stop was to the floating Uros islands about a 30 minute boatride out of port. These floating islands made by the uros people to keep away from the Inca culture when they were expanding and consuming communities of people around Peru and Bolivia to make the Empire that they were famous for obtaining. These Uros islands are quite impressive but because of my poor mood I hardly cared at that point in time. The people create their homes, their boats and the islands that they live on out of reeds, (they eat the reeds too! it tastes like water and is said to produce diarrhea in gringos, so I didn´t try to much of it, I´m trying to recover remember). Anyways, they swim underwater to the root of the reeds and cut underneath them to loosen these block like roots of the floor of the lake, once loose these root blocks float to the surface. With many layers and many blocks tied together they have a big floaty which they layer the top of many reeds and build their little huts ontop of. They then somhow anchor the island down so that it doesn´t drift away into the middle of nowhere leaving them stranded and left for dead. Each island lives about 15 to 20 years, over time the base of the island begins to deteriorate and lose its necissary floating ability. They are forced to begin the process of making another. There about 50-60 of these islands all close together. Now it was neat to learn this but I found it quite annoying how the people changed to accomodate tourism, all they do is take in tourists to sell stuff. It felt very fake, everywhere looking around these islands there were tourists boats everywhere. It was pathetic, joke of an experience and none of the tourists even noticed or cared. I had little respect for them or the people. But everyone needs to eat so......
Next stop was Island Amantani, which was a rediculously long ride because of our stupidly slow boat. I was paired with a guy from Lima and we stayed together with a host family for the night, which they provide food and accomodation. Now this was a real experience and I woke up the next morning feeling quite fulfulled. We had a good connection with our family. Thanks to my ability to communicate I was able to actually learn their way of life, their struggles, their poverty. This was touching. We spent the evening hiking to the highest point of the island to have a lookout which was quite impressive for sundown. Lake Titicaca being one of the highest navigatable lakes in the world sitting around 3900 metres ASL and the second largest lake in South America. The sacred inca lake where it is said that their gods were born.
The next day was rather pointless, visiting another island for a walk and lunch. Nice view, nice island, but it felt like filler. We caught the boat back which took around 3 HOURS.... I would sleep for 30 minutes look at the distance we had travelled and ask myself, have we moved at all, that cursed boat should be sunk. It was a nice trip, although I definitely was still feeling effects of being sick. It was not over yet. I went back to the hostel and relaxed for the afternoon and evening fighting against a fever and knowing I wanted to feel better for the next day, an early bus to Copacabana the Bolivian side of the lake, which is said by everyone to be nicer. About one month in and I am leaving Peru. Next stop Bolivia and the Isla del Sol in Copacabana.
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