Puno & Floating Islands

Our final stop in Peru was Puno, to see the floating islands. We took the bus during the day and the scenery was beautiful. Once we arrived we heading out to explore the town and find our way back to the bus station to buy our bus ticket to Bolivia. While exploring the markets I was excited to see pumpkins  because in Arequipa I had tried pumpkin soup and really loved it and was excited to try it again. The difference with the pumpkins here thought is that they're  green, so I was quite shocked when I had it and was served a green soup but it was better then our pumpkin soup back home.

That night we arranged our floating island tour with our hostel, it was at this point we found out about the 2 day option which we probably would have done but we had already bought our bus ticket for the following day and were running out of time, so we opted for the full day tour which visited the floating islands in the morning and Taquile island in the afternoon.

The floating islands were very fascinating and another one of those moment where you can't believe that people actually live like this. It's make up of  70 man-made islands which are in effect huge rafts of bundled reed located on Lake Tickitaca (the highest navigable lake in the world). The Uros people originally started building the islands here to hide and prevent attaches from the Incas and Collas but they have continued to live here because they can't afford the $4,000-5,000 it would cost to buy land.

Each Island has roughly 5-10  families with 18 people living on the island we visited. Each island has a self appointed president who is responsible for communicating with the other islands.  They have a primary school on one of the islands, where the kids are boated to school however for high school they need to travel to Puno to attend school. As for washrooms, they don't actually have one on the island and instead have an island with bathroom facilities, so the water doesn't get contaminated. So if you have to go to the washroom that means you need to get in your boat and rowing across.

On the island each family has a tiny one room house that are made of the dried reeds. The government has also recently supplied them with solar panels which they use to help power their TVs. We learned that in Peru and Ecuador the government has actually started to supply poor families with TVs in an effort to counter poverty. Apparently by providing them with TV it provided them with entertainment so they didn't feel the need to just keep having kids and inspired them towards a better life and apparently they have been having success with this imitative.










It takes about a year to build one of the islands and as you can imagine the ground is not solid and actually quite squishy. They need to keep layering the ground with new reed to stop any water from coming through. Because of this, arthritis in the knees is a common problem for them and pneumonia from the cold. Each island also has a boat created from reeds which we got to take a ride on, Trevor even helped with the rowing. It appears that all their money is essentially made from tourism.


The second island we visited I was actually disappointed with and I would recommend just doing the half day trip to the floating island and skip Taquile. It took us  2 hours to get there (it was the slowest boat we've been on) and even longer coming back, although we did get some nice sunbathing in.  We only spent two hours on the island where we had lunch, saw a traditional dance and walked up to the top of the island.