Row, row, row your boat

The morning of our Lake Titicaca tour in Puno, Peru was freezing cold. Puno weather was similar to that on the trail in that you would experience four seasons in one day. Freezing in the morning, hot during the day, and torrential downpour at night was our experience over our two day stay. We caught a bus to the port and then boarded a motorboat that had a closed in lower cabin, and two boat-long bench seats on the upper deck. Our guide, Fauso, had an impressive bilingual mastery and conducted our entire tour with scattered bilingual jokes between interesting facts. 

We began the tour on what we referred to as "the wolf boat" (apparently our captain was a fan of wolves) and we learned some background information on Lake Titicaca.  It is important to note this this, too, has a specific pronunciation that is even harder to master. The "c"s are these "ç" except upside down. The name and spelling comes from the language of Aymara, which is similar to Quecho, in respect to the fact that it is many Peruvian's first language before they even learn Spanish. This is another native tongue that is common near the Puno area, up in the mountains and the people that live on lake Titicaca. That ç is pronounced more like a "kuah" than a "kah" which is why the lake's name does not actually share a commonality with the Spanish word for shit. Oh, and while we are at it, "titi" means puma, and the lake is shaped like a puma chasing a rabbit (so they claim). Now that we've got that settled, Peruvians will still make the joke that 60% of the lake is on the Peruvian side of the border and 40% on the Bolvian, which means Peru is the "titi" and Bolvia gets the "caca". Bilingual jokes aplenty. 

And of course, we had to pretend to be Jack and Rose from Titanic:

Our first stop was at the floating islands Lake Titicaca is known for (that and being the highest navigable lake in the world). These islands are make out of thick reed roots, soil, and plant that grows in and naturally floats on the water. The indigenous people living on the lake will go to where these reeds grow, saw off a square chunk of this floating reed/soil combo and fill their boats with reed plants. When they decide they want to build a new island, they tie the squares together, add layer upon layer of reeds on top, and then build a little family compound (out of more reeds) right on top. The reeds do soak through and they need to re-top their islands with fresh reeds once a week as maintenance. Also, the wet reeds have quite a potent and unpleasant smell, as you would imagine a wet, soggy, reed grass would smell. However, it is really fascinating how much effort goes into it all. Some of the islands can take up to 2 years to build! 

They also use these plants for food, and say they have a taste and nutritional content similar to that of celery- aka- nothing.  But even better, they use them to create really cool reed boats which they navigate around the lake with. Some of them have grand lion heads or decorations on the fronts and backs and we even saw a double decker boat! We had the pleasure of riding in one as a local man rowed us around and showed us their school (on another island) and a few of their neighbor's islands. Two young girls from "our island" joined us and they giggles and braided their hair and ate raw carrots (a delicacy) during the ride. They then treated us to a mini performance in which they sang a short song from 6 countries and in 6 languages.  The English song was "row row row your boat"... Perfect. They were very proud of their performance and even snuggled with us a bit on the ride home. It was pretty adorable. 

We arrived back at the island, got to go inside some of the homes and learned more about the individual families, who are typically related. It was really fascinating to see how many people lived in these small reed huts and that they had battery powered televisions and cell phones. 

(And I made a new friend!)

The story behind these floating islands is that when the Spanish invaded, the indigenous people didn't want to be conquered and/or killed so they retreated to the sea. They built these islands to hide and started their own society out on the lake. The tradition stands today and many people still live there to honor their history. They are fisherman and sell fish for potatoes once a week when they visit the mainland. However, tourism has really allowed them to continue to thrive as they sell hand woven goods and give boat rides for tips.  They were very nice people and it was really interesting to meet them and experience their way of life in person. Unfortunately their life expectancy is only 60 years old as their wet and barefoot lifestyle has caused a lot of water retention related health problems like arthritis, hypertension, and obesity. 

Afterword we stopped at a big island (a real island) about 1.5 hours deeper into the lake. It was absolutely beautiful and actually looked a bit Greece with the beautiful blue lake, bright red flowers, and clean white paint. We had one of our best meals here- trucha a la plancha (grilled trout) served with rice, veggies, fresh and spicy salsa, and quinoa soup. The meal was prepared for us by a local family, which is part of the island people's tourism agreement. Once upon a time, investors wanted to take advantage of this gem of an island and build 5 star resorts on it. They promised the locals jobs and many were in support of the project. However, it was decided that this would ruin the integrity of the island and culture.  Instead, they would set up an arrangement where every week a different family would have the opportunity to cook for tourists at one of the 3 kitchens on the island. It was a super decadent and filling meal that only cost about $6 usd per person, but was extremely helpful to the locals. We hiked up and down the island and when we were done, it was time to get back on the boat. It was a 2.5 hour ride back to the mainland and we spent majority of it on the roof deck talking to travelers from Australia, The Canary Islands, and mainland Spain. 

That evening we met up with a dance team friend of ours, Amanda, who just happened to be doing her Public Health masters program at Johns Hopkins, but her clinical in Puno, Peru. Such a small world. We met her at this delicious local restaurant where I ordered grilled alpaca with mushroom risotto and Heather got a pizza. It was delicious and we had the entertainment of a huge parade happening right outside the windows of the restaurant. On our walk home we had to sprint between parade sections as there were huge brass instrument players and people dancing and twirling with Pom Poms and fancy boots. We have no idea what it was about, but it was pretty aggressive for 10:00pm.

We retired to the hotel for our last night and prepped for an early wake up to get on another bus, this time to Bolivia.