| Day out on Lake Titicaca
Apr 22, 2005 | (click to enlarge)
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 | | show all 5 | | A little girl on the Uros islands who was very pleased with the apple we gave her | | In front of some of the plastic bottle/reed boats | | Us with Jane and Graham on our ride to the next island | | |
| Another brilliant day in Peru! We left the hotel at about 7am to go to the docks to catch our boat. When we got there we stopped to buy some fruit for the islanders as I remembered seeing something about this on the Travel show on BBC a while ago, but we weren't sure whether this would really be the case or if they'd all be thinking "oh no it's the English people with their fruit again". We decided to give it a go and bought a load of oranges, apples and pears.
We then had a 20 minute ride on our boat to one of the floating Uros islands. When we arrived some ladies helped us to disembark and it was just amazing - everything on the island was made of reeds, the island itself, the houses, the boats, everything. We heard a bit about how it's all put together and the history, and then we walked around the island and were allowed to look in people's houses. We decided to try out the fruit and offered it to a couple of children in exchange for a photo opportunity. Suddenly every child in sight appeared, and was after a bit of fruit and quite willing to pose for photos to earn it. It was really lovely, they were so friendly. I owe the BBC one for that! We had a wander around and looked at all the lovely things that were for sale made by the islanders and spent some soles.
We then got on to one of the reed boats for a trip to the next island. The reed boats appear to be made entirely of reeds BUT underneath them are loads and loads of plastic soft drinks bottles all wrapped up in some kind of plastic. What a brilliant way to recycle. Anyway, we were punted over to the next Uros island which was a bit bigger. There were more things to spend your money on, more children to eat the fruit, and some interesting structures - a look out tower and a museum full of dead animals!
After this we had a two and a half hour ride to Tequile island which doesn't float but is still pretty interesting. We had to climb from the docks up to the top - great when the oxygen is low and you're at over 4,000 metres above sea level, we were exhausted. It was worth the climb though, we had a look around the town square and then went to buy things from the cooperative store. The nice thing here is that when the villagers want to sell their work they have to give it in at the store and then it is sold there and they receive 90% and 10% goes towards the community. We had lunch in someone's back garden and were enteretained by "Richard" who was a student who played the pan pipes and a kind of 10 string ukelele. It was very good, although I'm not sure about the pan pipes version of "Hey Jude".
After lunch our guide told us a little about the costumes that the people wear - the knitting is all done by the men, and they knit the colourful hats that they wear. If they are married the hat is patterened all the way up, but if they are single, only half the way. They also knit all the skirts for the women. In return the women weave belts and bags and shawls for the men, which are really beautiful.
We then had a little walk around the island and returned to our boat via some very steep steps. Then we were dropped off at our hotel's very own docks! I think the other passengers were very impressed.
We've both caught the sun despite wearing our factor 25 suncream all day! We are hoping that some of it will wear off by tomorrow as we look a bit like a weird breed of panda at the moment. Maybe a pisco sour will help - it's worth a try anyway.
Well we're off to dinner now. The food here is fantastic. We're obviously the party animals in the hotel - last night we left the restaurant at 9.30 and there were no other guests in sight!
Off to Cuzco on the train tomorrow, so hopefully our next hotel will have broadband and we will be able to upload some more photos. Bye for now. |
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