A Day on the Lake

Today (9th August) we went to visit two islands in Lake Titicata: Islas Uros and Isla Taquile.

We took the community boat out to the island which had its advantages and disadvantages. All of the money goes straight back to the local community but the boat is one of the slowest around meaning we got very little time on Taquile.

After about 20 mins on the boat we arrived at one of the Uros islands. Uros consists of lots of small floating reed islands, each a few 10s of metres across but each connected to their neighboring islands. The islands are almost 2m thick and are anchored in place.

Unfortunately tourism is now their main source of income. Interesting as the visit was, it felt like the whole visit was some sort of show.

Each island had its own dock so that tourists from different boats can't mingle and on arrival they bring out their wares to sell. There was then the option to sit on a crowded reed boat and be taken across to another island. We opted to take our now seemingly fast boat instead, arriving after a few minutes to relax on an island selling teas, coffee and snacks. After around 20 mins the reed boat eventually arrived and we all immediately left for Taquile. No drinks or snacks for those people!

The journey to Taquile took almost a further 3 hours but we braved the open top deck of the boat for the whole journey. We had come prepared with woolly hats, gloves, coats, multiple layers and windproof trousers!

It was up here we caught our first glimpse of Bolivia (and a little too much of the Sun!) and saw where we would be staying tomorrow night, Copacabana.

We finally arrived on Taquile just before lunch. We took a leisurely hour walk across the island, ate fresh trout from the lake for lunch then took a further hour stroll to the other side of the island where our boat was waiting for us.

The island felt very Mediterranean and without all the islanders being in traditional dress we might have thought we were on a Greek island.

On our way we stopped to admire the view and a couple of youngsters came and sat next to us when they saw us get a sweet out to eat.

We shared them round but it seemed we didn't share them evenly. After a few minutes of negotiations between the girls and swaps of flavours they settled down and munched on their sweets.

Just before we got back to the boat we met an old lady. We dug out some savory biscuits that we had brought along and also dug out some sweets and a few soles. Oddly she seemed most excited by the sweets than the biscuits or the money!

On the way back on the boat we decided not to brave the top deck and instead sat at the back and read. Outside but protected from the wind.

All in all quite a relaxing day :-)