Around 9am on Tuesday morning, we set out from our hotel in the center of Puno towards the pier, where you can take a boat ride to visit one of the islands of Lago Titicaca, also spelled Lago Titiqaqa.
My daughters were happy to be able to take a tricycle taxi to the pier. It is hard to imagine the shape you have to be in to be able to drive one of these taxis, especially since Puno is at 3,860 meters above sea level.
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| Raymi, Soraya, and Tatiana on a tricycle taxi in Puno |
On the Peruvian side of Lago Titicaca, you can visit the Urus floating islands, the island of Taquile, and Amantani island. From the Bolivian side, you can visit the Isla del Sol and Isla de la Luna. The visit to the Urus islands can be completed in a morning or an afternoon, whereas the visit to the other islands takes longer. The best way to visit Taquile and Amantani is to take a boat ride to Taquile, where you spend the night, and then to Amantani for lunch. The overnight trip is very affordable if you buy your tickets on the pier, where it costs just 30 soles per person for lodging and food. We have done that trip before, so decided to just take the girls to see the floating Urus Islands.
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| Me - on the way to Urus |
The boat ride to the Urus Islands lasts less than 30 minutes, so I was sure the kids wouldn’t get bored on the boat ride. They didn’t and were happy to be on the lake and especially to ride on the upper portion of the motorboat.
Once we got to the islands, one of the people there explained a bit to us about his customs, traditions, and lifestyle. He told us that his ancestors decided to build these floating islands to escape the Spanish conquest. Nearly five centuries ago, an Aymaran couple went out to Lake Titicaca and built an island for themselves to live on, made out of reeds. Since then, people have lived on these islands, carrying on their traditions of living in houses made of reeds, wearing typical clothes, and speaking Aymara. Over the years, they have become somewhat modernized, changing the style of their houses, learning to speak Spanish, and wearing shoes. In addition, the Peruvian government has installed a medical clinic and an elementary school to serve the island. Today, their primary source of income is tourism. However, some islanders prefer not to receive tourists on their islands and continue to live as their ancestors did.
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| Traditional reed house on a small floating island |
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| The Aymara women and girl who received us on their island |
We all listened attentively as our guide explained their lifestyle. It is somewhat hard to believe that people would prefer to live on floating islands made of reeds, but I suppose there are many reasons why they would continue to live there – the livelihood they can earn from tourism being one and the maintenance of their culture and traditions being another. The guide did mention that rheumatism is a problem in the elderly because the islands are fairly damp. After our introduction to the island, the people who lived on the small island we visited took us to their homes and showed us their handicrafts. The kids wanted to take home a souvenir, so we bought a few items to take with us.
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| Raymi posing with the girls who sell handicraft |
The next item on our agenda was a boat ride in a reed boat to the capital of the Urus Islands – Hatun Pacha – where we had the opportunity to have a tasty lunch of fried trout and check out some more of the reed islands. After lunch, we got back onto the motorboat and headed back to Puno.
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| Raymi, Soraya, and Tatiana on the reed boat |
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| Nando, on the reed boat |
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| An Aymara woman pulling a boat to shore |
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| Admiring Lago Titicaca |
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| Tatiana - on Urus Island |
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| Our motorboat |
Once we were back on the mainland, my daughters saw paddleboats in the shape of dragons and swans and couldn’t resist the opportunity to get back on the water again. As the boat rides were only six soles for three of them, we relented and let them take a ride on the lake. When they were finished, of course, everyone was ready for a snack, so we found a bakery where I had a chicken empanada and a leche asada and the kids had some sort of filled donut that was loaded with sugar.
Our next stop was the Plaza, where the kids could engage in their favorite city pastime - pigeon-catching. They entertained themselves with that while Nando and I watched people walking through the Plaza. I noticed that in Puno more women wear traditional clothing than in other Peruvian cities. However, this seems to be a dying tradition, as I saw many families where the grandmother wore her traditional garb, while her daughter and granddaughter wore jeans or slacks. On the Urus Islands, on the other hand, people young and old wore traditional clothing and spoke more Aymara than Spanish.
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| A family in Puno - only the grandmother wears the traditional attire |
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| Plaza de Armas, Puno, Peru |
After all that walking and riding around, we were ready for dinner. The kids wanted pizza, so we went to one of the many pizzerias – Ukuku’s. The pizza was not very good, but my aji de gallina (peppered chicken stew) was tasty. We went back to our cheap, but reasonably comfortable hotel – Presidente Inn – and went to sleep.
We wanted to get plenty of rest in preparation for our drive to Arequipa the following day. At this point, we are heading back to Lima, via Arequipa.
It has been good to travel around different cities, towns, and villages of the Andes, both as experiences for the kids, as well as for me to think about my current and future research. At some point, once I finish up all my other ongoing projects, I think it would be useful to do a comparative study on racism within Peru – looking at the Andean, mestizo, and Afro-Peruvian populations.
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