Titicaca

More apologies for being slow.  I'm now having 10 days at a beach resort in Thailand, so will hopefully catch up on the last 3 months worth of blog posts!

Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world. It is huge, and used to be much larger till geology chopped it short a long time ago. It is famous to for it's floating villages (built on reed rafts). We had a trip out to visit one of these villages, Taquile Island, and then an overnight home-stay in a rural/farming community.

The day started with a damp rickshaw ride down to the harbour.

About half an hour on the boat took us out to the floating village, made up of lots of smaller 'family' islands. The 'Duck' island we visited had about 5 families living on it and we were shown around by the 'president' of the island, including an explanation of how the islands are created and maintained.

'Duck' island

Layer upon later of reeds

The reeds are harvested from the reed beds around the village, and laid down in alternating layers. More layers are added as the reeds decompose, until eventually they replace the entire island with a new one (about every 10 years if I remember rightly). The island is anchored to the lake floor and neighboring islands.

Some of the fish they catch and eat

Dried birds and eggs

Lots of the islands had reed 'statues' or towers, and I asked if they had any particular significance. Turns out their primary purpose is to make the island easy to find among all the other islands!

We explored the island and chatted with the locals, seeing inside their houses and looking at their wares. We also tried on some traditional garments to see what it was like, which the locals seemed to find amusing.

After visiting the floating islands, we motored through the reed beds and mud flats and out onto the lake proper. The reed beds are home to loads of water birds, and also pigs farmed by the villagers.

Local bringing back some freshly harvested reeds

From there it was about an hour across the lake to Taquile Island. It is a small community of around 2000 Quechua people, and they are effectively self governing. They don't pay taxes, they have no police, and they live under Quechua tribal law. All in all it's pretty peaceful and tranquil out there, other than the squads of tourists!

Before our lunch of lake fish, we were treated to a local dance, and demonstrations from the ladies of their weaving, and from the men of their knitting. Knitting is a standard past time of the men here, and to prove yourself to a potential bride's family they will want to inspect your knitted hat. There must be basically no give in it at all! This is proving a little problematic for the girls who get boyfriends not from the island as their attempts at hats are fairly rubbish.

After that it was back on the boat and back to a peninsula of the mainland to our overnight home-stay village.

The village has a primary school, but no shops as far as I could tell. There was one rough road about halfway up the hill that leads eventually to Puno. We were encouraged to take gifts of useful things to our host family, like rice, pasta, oil, and jam.

I was shown round the village by the host family's 5 year old daughter, Linda. She didn't speak any english, and my Quechua is non-existant, but we managed and became bestest friends! I introduced her to the 'fart piano' app on my phone, which provided her and her friends good fun for 20 minutes or so. She showed Lee and I how to work the fields, which we did for a while, but it was knackering and I'm not sure we actually improved the soil at all! By the end of the stay she was happily calling me 'gringo loco', which I have been assured was a term of endearment.

I did get a bit more of a chance to do some wildlife spotting while there (Dad will like the photos!), and in the evening the moon was incredibly large and clear.  Not sure I've ever seen it so magnificent before.

Xmas Intermission

Ok, ok, I'm a bad Moo.  Sorry for the lack of recent updates  (particular apologies to Yarissa). I'm becoming lazier and lazier. In Australia just now and because it's not an organised tour, there is not really that much going on, and somehow that makes me even less likely to do some writeups. Also I'm still writing up Peru when I've done Bolivia (1 day), Chille (4 days), New Zealand (mostly just family time), Fiji (quite lovely in places) and Australia (barrier reef and then lots of driving) since then, so it's beginning to fade, but then that was the whole point of doing this blog in the first place.

The Machu Picchu Express

Anyway. Mum will like/shake her head over this little anecdote.

On the way back from Machu Picchu we took the train along the Sacred River for an hour or two. Nice scenery, but we were all totally knackered having just done the trail and from getting up at 4am that morning. In an attempt to keep ourseves entertained and awake, we played hangman. Now, remember, the people playing are me, Sylwia (Polish), Richard (Jamacan) and Rod (Peruvian), so we don't have a lot of films / TV type things in common for guessing (and 2 of us were working in English, not our native language), so we went for things related to our tour.

There was "Inca Trail" (an easy one to get started)

There was one about my incessant coughing ("I need a cough suppressant" - I'd asked Rod how to say this in Spanish - I've forgotten the phrase, but it's something like 'I need something to cut the cough').

There was one ridiculing me for getting a little bit of sunburn while exploring Machu Picchu.

And then I tried to do the group name we had come up with. Our group name poked a bit of fun at Rod's height, he's small (but lovely), and Sylwia coined the Spanish phrase "Cuatro y medio", or "Four and a half". We would use it whenever we were trying to get a table in a restaurant and it always got a laugh from the restaurant staff and hilarious indignant comments from Rod. Unfortunately my Spanish is not terribly good, and when you are playing hangman, it kinda requires the spelling to be correct. Here was my effort, and it eventually caused us all to break down in tears of laughter, I can't remember laughing so hard for so long.  I managed to incorporate Italian, French and Spanish in a 3 word phrase. I'd say the altitude and exhaustion were definitely contributing factors. It was utterly hilarious at the time, trust me.

So anyway, we bused back to Cusco, stopping for some photos of the Andes on the way. It was quite breathtaking, even after having been walking in the mountains for the past 3 days. Then it was a few days, in Cusco, followed by a long bus trip to Puno and Lake Titicaca on the 25th. Yes, Xmas day was an 8 hour bus trip.

First night back after the Trail - we hit the town
(and played cards). I may have gotten tiddly.

Xmas Eve dinner with the team (Cuatro y medio!)

Weird-ass giraffe necked nativity scene in Cusco.
Don't ask me about the cows from Hell.

Big Xmas market in Cusco.
As far as I could tell it only sold tat.

The delights of Cusco Bus Station on Xmas Morning

Keepin' it festive

Puno and Titicaca