17/12/18 We are ready to explore Lake Titicaca (which literally translates as puma stone), exploited since the 5th century B.C. It is about 170km long by 60km wide and is split between Peru and Bolivia. Incas had a lot of respect for the lake as it brought them food, water and a trading road. We left early to catch a boat. Our first stop is on the floating islands of Puro. The islands are made of reed and the people use reed for everything. Food, building ground, building houses, boats, etc. Today most families come to the islands for tourists so they can demo how they live there. The floating islands are artificial. They cut pieces of floating land where the reeds grow then they bond them together to the shape they want like a puzzle. After a few months, the roots have grown through all the assembled blocks and the island is created. Then they start stacking dry reed in multiple layers until it is deep enough to build on top of it. It is no longer sustainable for the locals to live on the floating islands anymore because there are not enough fish for them to catch and the weather is often very humid so they can catch bad diseases like arthritis or joint pain. The water temperature is 9 degrees on average and there is a high risk to fall in the water so kids learn very early to swim and survive, they learn to float by the age of 4, with plastic bottles tied around their hips. The people have a lot of respect for their young kids as the living conditions are difficult. They still come for the tourists to demo their way of living, share their traditions and sell their artwork but most go back to the land.
The next stop was Taquile, an isolated island at 3800m high an hour away from Puro by boat. Multiple families still live there and they are very welcoming. They wore their ceremony costumes and danced for us before serving us lunch. Each community has a leader and they take turns to manage the island. Men have to learn knitting to find a wife and they constantly knit or help developing the island.
The girls wear long braided hair with ponpons at the end that are weighted with rocks so that if a boy does not behave well they can hit him with their braids. Men wear belts knitted by themselves when they are young, or knitted by their wife once they marry. Once married the bride cut her long hair and uses it to built a support belt for their husband’s back, as they do a lot of heavy work on the island.
The traditional way of choosing a partner for the men is to use a mirror during group celebrations. The man would try to dazzle his favourite girl’s eyes with sunlight in the mirror to get her attention.
Back on the ground we had to leave the city earlier than initially planned due to a protest announced the next day that would have blocked our way to Cuszco. Mine workers sometimes block the road access to the city so we took another night bus that night to reach Cuszco early morning. I didn’t sleep at all on this one, the road was too bumpy and the temperature changed a lot on the way.
