Lake Titicaca

Another Saturday rolled around, and Alan and I found ourselves on yet another bus to Puno. We took the road right next to the train tracks, so our bus ride from Cusco to Puno gave us almost exactly the same view as the train ride from Puno to Cusco had given us the week before.

On Sunday, a tour company picked us up to take us out on Lake Titicaca, where we had made arrangements to stay the night on Taquile Island.

Our first stop was on the Uros Islands, which are the floating islands made out of totora reeds. Our guide explained that the bottom meter is made of totora roots, and then the top meter (which is replenished often) is made of overlapping reeds. It takes about 8 months to a year to create an island, depending on size, and the islands survive about 15 years. If there is a conflict between neighbors on the island, the people simply saw their section of the island off and float away. Because of this, there are at least 80 floating Uros islands now, the largest one with 6 families on it. We went to Santa Maria Island.

A demonstration of how the islands are constructed

This is how far the roots stick out of the water.

Everyone on our tour boat was assigned a host on the island. The people date back to pre-Inca time and speak Aymara, which is pretty different from Quechua. Fortunately, they also speak Spanish because of all the tourist interaction they have. The islands share the tourism responsibility/income, so each island won’t receive tourists every day. I couldn’t get a straight answer from our host about just how often they do get tourists.

The Uros Island that we toured

Everyone shares a kitchen in the middle of the island.

Our host showed us her totora hut, complete with totora beds and a television (ex-President Fujimori gave the islands solar panels), and that was about it. The people also eat the totora reeds, which keeps their teeth strong and healthy; they don't brush. She dressed us in typical clothing and tried to sell us her handicrafts. We were guilted into buying a pillowcase.

Don't we look like we just BELONG?! The poms at the end of my braid are the colors of a single lady. It's what our host had. My hat means I am a little girl.

Our host and this pillowcase she embroidered.

Some tourists paid extra to take a boat made of totora reeds and plastic pop bottles to the other Uros island we toured.

Goodbye, island!

The next island tour was significantly less personal, and felt more like a pit stop. Then we were off to Taquile, an island made out of the stuff islands are usually made of. It was a 2-½ hour ride.

The Peruvian Navy and the people of the Uros Islands cleared a road in the totora reeds so that motorboats could pass through.

Beautiful, blue water

Finally, we arrived!

Taquile Island

Pre-Inca civilizations built terraces on Taquile, and they're still used today.

Despite that it’s visited by tourists every day, Taquile seems much more remote and authentic than anywhere else we’ve visited yet.First of all, the only mode of transportation is walking. There are no cars, no bikes, and no pack animals. Just your feet and a modern walking path. This was a huge deal to us, since we’ve been drowning in smog since arriving in Peru.

Secondly, the Taquile people are protected by the government. They don’t pay taxes, and so don’t really subscribe to any sort of money. Of course, they use soles, that’s why they allow tourists on their island, but that money is mostly supplementary. Most people grow their food, and instead of selling crops, just live off of what they make.  

Because their lifestyle doesn’t require them to interact with the world outside of their island, the traditions of the Taquile people are much more intact than traditions of other cultures we’ve seen on this trip. They all speak Quechua. Most speak Spanish, because it’s taught in school, but not all. And everyone wears traditional clothing, even the men. This was charming at first, but then became terrifying because we had a very hard time distinguishing our host from every other man in the village.

Knitting is the man’s job on Taquile, and their stitches are small and tight enough that their hats can hold water. The hats are important identifiers. If a man’s hat is all red with blue patterns, he is married. If the tail end of a man’s (or boy’s) hat is white, he is single. There is another type of hat that is very colorful, but I didn’t catch what that means. Women wear black shawls with colorful poms at the end. If the poms are large, they are married; if they’re small, they’re single. Another way to identify a woman’s marital status is that married women wear more skirts (yes, all at the same time), made by their husband. Men may be the knitters, but women and girls are the spinners.

Alan's sneaky photo of a woman spinning yarn. You think she saw him?

It’s an island of 2,000 inhabitants, who identify as Incas more than as Taquileños. And they look it. The Inca people have longer faces, small eyes, and are smaller-boned than the people on Uros Islands.

When we first arrived on Taquile, our tour group walked through the plaza. Taquile was celebrating a holiday that I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around (some kind of cross between Catholicism and the Incan religion). Dancers in the plaza did the same bouncing, spinning dance to the same 30-second tune over and over and over for HOURS. Seriously, it was still going when Alan and I passed through that evening.

The men in the festival wore different clothing than usual, so this isn’t a good example of the hats I was talking about earlier.

Alan and I were the only people from our tourist group to stay on Taquile for the night, so after lunch we left our group to go with our host, Silvano. Silvano was great. He spoke slow, clear Spanish (whew, not just Quechua!), so I understood him better than I have any other native Spanish speaker.

Silvano walked us around the island before taking us to his house. We saw some pre-Inca ruins and a lot of stone walls.

The general Taquile landscape

Silvano explaining the pre-Inca ruins. He can still remember when the roof was intact.

One of my favorite things about Taquile was that the kids just ran loose. I mean, we’re on a traffic-less island of 2,000 people, right? Most kids were out flying kites, which the Incas call águilas (“eagles,” in English).

Plastic kites against the backdrop of Bolivian mountains

Alan and I stayed in a guest bedroom separate from the house.

The view from one of our bedroom windows

The view from another one of our windows. I was hoping our host would have an alpaca or llama, but Silvano said the island didn’t get cold enough for camelids. So we settled for goofy sheep.

After getting settled in our guesthouse, we walked to the highest point on Taquile. It’s a sacred spot, used on the solstices to receive blessings from and give back to Pachamama. From there, we could see for the first time that we were on an island, surrounded by Lake Titicaca on all sides.

The highest point in Taquile

View of Amantani Island. It has a population of 4,000, and is where most tourist stay, if spending a night on a Titicaca island.

Another view from the high point 

At this viewpoint, we ran into about 8 other tourists. By this point, if the tourists were still on the island, they were staying the night. I am pretty sure, though, that the ten-or-so of us were the only gringos on the island that evening. 

Back at the house, we helped Silvano’s wife peel potatoes. These potatoes were so tiny that my shoddy peeling-with-a-knife skills chopped the potatoes about in half. 

Dinner was delicious. No goat heads. Just potato and noodle soup, followed by potato and noodle stir fry: my kind of carbs. No one else drank anything until after the meal either; surely culture is to blame for why Mom always got her coffee AFTER breakfast, making her cranky. The family also consists of two sons, a 9- and 14-year-old. The 9-year-old joined us for dinner, but the 14-year-old, Ivan, was practicing drums in the school band for tomorrow’s Independence Day celebration.

Washing dishes. Guidebooks told us that host families would not be comfortable with help in the kitchen. That was not our experience!

Alan and I went to bed almost immediately after dinner. But first, we checked out the stars. Finally not in a city, the Southern Cross was easy to see.

The next day was July 28, Peru’s Independence Day. I had mixed feelings about spending the holiday on the island. Would I miss out on seeing the country celebrate? I had decided that it was a good thing to be away from all of the crazy, though. Puno had been shooting off firecrackers for weeks, and there had been an all-night party seemingly on the roof of our hostel the night before we went to the island. But, no need to worry! We got our dose of nationalism right there on the island.

First, though, we went to the beach. It was soooo quiet, just like the rest of the island. We shared the space with MAYBE ten seagulls?

The beach

I’ve forgotten to mention the most incredible thing about Silvano: He’s been to Albuquerque! He doesn’t travel off of the island often, much less away from Perú or Bolivia, but a group of 8 Inca men went to New Mexico in 2011 for a cultural exchange with a program for native peoples. What are the odds?!

Alan and I took our time heading back to the plaza after our beach time. We had already experienced one Taquile festivity the day before, and had had enough of that after about 5 minutes. The prospect of spending the rest of the day listening to the school band (It’s the first year that the school has had a band, and they are truly terrible.) and watching the ENTIRE population of the island march by the governor made us drag our feet. But eventually we wound up there, and guess what? It was exactly as we had imaged it would be.

At first, it was kind of fun to see the little kids.

But kind of terrifying to see in military garb, holding fake guns

The band

Imagine that 2,000 people took turns marching just like these blue-skirted girls around and around the plaza for, literally, hours. Now imagine that Alan and I are in the middle of the plaza, trying our best to stay out of the way. But, uh, there's nowhere to go.

Unattended children will climb arches for a better view of their fellow Incas marching around in circles.

The experience of our first evening on the island was unforgettable, and Silvano was an incredibly kind person and exceptional host. However, by mid-morning, Alan and I just wanted off that island. And so we finally made it back to cold, dirty Puno. Sigh.