Today we set out on Lake Titicaca, which I didn’t realise was massive!! Spending both Peru and Bolivia, it looked more like an ocean than a lake. From our hotel to boat we were picked up on bikes and we raced down to the lake shore.
Our first stop was the floating islands, there are 165 islands on the peru side alone. We stopped on an island and they explained how they built the island and how they live.
The islands have at least a 1m base of what looked like grass roots. They leave that for at least 3-6 months, so they start to fuse together. They will then at a 1m of reeds. They will invite 300 people to compress reeds from other islands. There are 24 people that live on the island we visited, all the same family.
They need to add a new layer of reeds once a month to maintain the island.
We then visited another island for lunch. There was a festival happening which we watched for a while. We had soup and trout for lunch before walking across the island to get back on the boat.
We then arrived to the island we were staying at with our mama and papas for the night.
The group played football (clearly I didn’t lol) we did got dressed up in the traditional clothing which included 3 skirts, jacket, belt, shawl, hat and a pom pom decorations.
The locals then showed us a dance, which we then copied them, only a shame it got so dark as we were doing it.
We then went back to our families house and they cooked us dinner. I was with Nick and Georgia, who were another g adventure group we paired up with. Not speaking Spanish or the local language did make interacting with them difficult but the food was fantastic, we gave them our gifts. We were advised to bring 3 things, I brought more than that (most of us did) I brought rice, pasta, spaghetti, sugar, porridge, popcorn, pineapple, marshmallows and oreos. I did have a big bag of sweets that I shared out with the kids that were at the football pitch earlier in the evening.
Georgia and myself shared a room, which was better than some of the hostels we had stayed at. We were told to be up for 7am to start breakfast.
For breakfast, we helped make a fried bread, which was yummy! We then helped with the pigs and their 8 piglets, which were so cute, the sheep and lambs, 1 hen and 2 donkey’s.
While Georgia and Nick went kayaking I helped prep the vegetables for lunch, peeling the potatoes, grating carrots and another vegetable I have never seen before and lastly chopping runner beans. After lunch we washed up and then it was time to say goodbye to our families and return to the boat.
On the way back a couple of the guys jumped off the boat into lake, which was freezing 🥶
In the evening back in Puno, we went for dinner with a show of traditional dances. Not as good as the one I went to in Lima, but you get what you pay for.
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