Puno is a city located in the shores of Lake Titicaca, a sacred fresh water lake between Peru and Bolivia and the highest fresh water lake of the world at 3810 meters of altitude. Aside from visits to the islands in Lake Titicaca, there are a few ruins from pre-inca times that can be visited in Peru such as the Temple of Fertility and the Sillustani tombs.
Like many other Peruvian cities in the Andes region, is has been built in the surrounding hills, and many of its streets either go up or down with some flat streets near the harbor. Being a large city means that there are supermarkets, pharmacies and other shops available. And they have extensive opening times except on Christmas day when the open later in the day and close sooner.
For Puno, we booked only a tour to Lake Titicaca’s islands for the 24th of December, Christmas Eve, because we where convinced there would be no tours on Christmas. And we were somehow right, there were only a few evening tours as most places were closed during the morning. We took advantage to rest and relax before leaving Peru to go to Bolivia.
- Lake Titicaca tour (24th of December)
The bus picked us up at our hostel early to go to the harbor and take the fast boat for the tour. It had been recommended to us to use a fast boat as normal boats took longer to reach the islands and even longer to go back and it was worth it.
Once in the boat, our tour guide for the day briefly explained what would we be doing for the day and some security measures. Then we set off through the reefs towards the floating islands of the Uros, our first stop.
The islands are built of reef’s roots blocks, a floating root, with dried stalks of reefs on top. They put new reef’s stalks every two weeks to avoid their island being inundated. They have two kinds of houses: the traditional tipi shaped house that is barely used nowadays and small square structures, more common, that they protect from the water with plastics. All islands are anchored otherwise they would drift. Two to three families live in every island and their main economic activity is tourism. At the moment there are 95 floating islands.
These floating islands last for 30 years and cutting a block takes a great effort even using more modern tools. Every family brings in four blocks of reef’s root to the floating island they belong to. Their main transport to the mainland are small speedboats. They also have small traditional boats made of reefs for romantic escapes and larger reef boats, with capacity for about twenty people that they use to earn extra money from tourists and for big celebrations such as weddings.
After a twenty minute boat trip on the large traditional boat, we went to a larger floating island where we could get some snacks and even more souvenirs. As interesting as it was, this felt a bit contrived and very touristy. It is my belief that they should change their current model to something that feels more authentic.
From the Uros islands we sailed on the open waters of Lake Titicaca for one hour to reach Tequile island, our next stop. Even when we barely got out on the largest part of the lake, it is was very easy to imagine the immensity of this fresh water lake and the importance for the inhabitants of this region.
The island of Tequile was inhabited by the Tawayanco, a pre-inca culture that also made extensive use of terraces for farming potatoes and quinoa, among other crops. The Inca took this island as a control point for the lake. There are still remains of the Tawayanco culture influenced by the Catalan people who settled the island later on, mainly on their textile traditions. In this island, men learn to knit and crochet and cannot marry unless they knit their own cap.
The speedboat left us in one harbor on Tequile island and would pick us up on the other harbor, on the other side of the island. We hiked up to reach the place where we had a fantastic lunch and after lunch hiked a bit more to reach to Plaza de Armas on the top of the island with magnificent views of the area. To go back to the boat, we just had to descend to the other harbor while enjoying the views.
From the island we went directly back to Puno’s harbor, the tour was over. On the way back, the tour guide recommended a few things we could visit in Puno city, like the textile crafts market, near the harbor and the market, on the way to Plaza de Armas, so we decided to walk back to the hostel.
That night we celebrated Christmas Eve with a nice soup and cuy chactado for dinner. We just rested and relaxed during Christmas staying most of the time in the hotel as I was feeling a bit unwell.
Puno was our last stop in Peru, where we had been for one month. We were going towards La Paz, Bolivia’s capital city, on the 26th of December.
