Our last day in Puno, we got up bright and early (a bit too early for the day after the festivals) and headed out on a boat into the waters of Lake Titicaca. Despite its astonishing height above sea level (the highest there is) it is quite a large lake and highly navigable (if i had done more research, I would have added some astonishing figures here). We started our tour with the floating islands of Uros.

These islands are pretty farout. They are literally a group of inhabited islands freely floating out in the middle of the lake. They are constructed primarily out of cut reeds, which are continually added onto the top of the island, and used to expand it if more real estate is required. Walking on the islands is kind of weird, as the soggy surface tends to give a little as you walk (apparently there have been the occasional overweight tourist that has gone right through). There continue to be communities of people that do in fact live their lives on these islands. Although now tourism fuels the economy, there was a time when all that was used was a barter system between the islands to get what they needed. They rely on fishing for food, and also eat a part of the reeds that is kind of like a fruit for them, the dried reeds are also use for fire fuel. We walked around a bit, took in some of the local island culture, then cut out for the island of Taquile.

Taquile is an actual island, whos location remains the same year round. It has a small local farming community, and a little village center. We walked up from the small boat landing, through some agricaultural land and livestock, to the small village plaza. The plaza consists of not more than a shop, a restaurant, and a couple of artesan market shops. We went up the road a little ways to another restaurant, where we sat up on the roof with a great view of the lake, and ate fresh trout. We had little time before heading back down to the boat to go to the small island of Chilcas.

Chilcas is actually a privately owned island, with a rather fancy resort built up on it. It belonged to some friends of Silvia and Julio, and they wanted to head over there to check it out and see the island. I spotted a path leading down from the resort to the water, where there was sort of a rocky clearing. I took this as my opportunity for a dip into the famed Lake Titicaca. I was somewhat surprised to find that it wasn´t even quite as cold as my own Lake Michigan in May. It was a pretty refreshing and overall spiritually invigorating experience on the whole.

As for the thrilling conclusion...we took the boat back to Puno, and had another thrilling busride back to Cusco through the night.