Frontera to Frontera, Pt 5.

I readjusted to traveling solo again and boarded a bus toward Puno to see the floating islands of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world. I arrived in Puno and had some dinner at an overpriced veggie restaurant, but I was really hungry and didn`t care. I booked a tour to the islands through the hostel because I just didn`t have the energy on my own to go to the harbor and haggle with some fisherman.

I woke up at 6:30am and boarded a really really slow boat that wreaked like gasoline. I mean, this boat was slow. I probably could have swam to the first island faster if I had the stamina. I was just thankful that neither being on Lake Titicaca or being in a smelly gas boat made me sick.

Lake Titicaca has several `floating islands` which are man-made islands built on the water out of reed that grows in the lake. The first island I visited was called Uros and was one of these islands of reed. They were impressive and unlike anything I had ever seen before. The islands themselves were kind of silly though because they tried to claim that people still carried out a traditional way of life living solely on these islands, in their little huts with their solar panels for their TV´s and an income supplemented by the crafts they sell through tourist visits to the islands, but it was obvious that no one really lived there anymore and that the islands, now, were all for show. They reminded me of one of those historical towns where everyone dresses up in old clothes and you watch the blacksmith make horseshoes or something, except that they claimed this was real. It kind of bothered me. The second island I visited, Taquile had actual villagers who actually lived on the island. Taquile itself wasn´t that interesting, it was just a town that happened to be on an island. But what a wonderful place to live, on an island surrounded by the wonderfully peaceful and blue waters of the lake.

Was the boat delivered me back to shore I had some dinner and then headed to the bus station to head toward to Peru-Chile border and continue south through the continent.