(Above: Aymara women on one of the Uros Floating Islands, Lake Titicaca)
Puno is one of the largest cities in Peru with a population of 200,000 people. The economy is based on smuggling "contraband" goods from Bolivia into Peru and on the surrounding agriculture in the high plains. The buildings and houses are almost all unpainted brown brick built very close with narrow side streets. It is not a pretty city; in fact we decided it was the ugliest city we'd ever seen with nothing to offer except for altitude sickness at an elevation of 12,500 feet and, of course Lake Titicaca.
Lake Titicaca (yes that is the real name) is on the border of Peru and Bolivia. It is the highest navigable water in the world. It is approximately 100 x 30 miles in size, with an average depth of 350 feet and 40 types of fresh-water fish. For those of you that thought about ordering your Lake Titicaca shirt, we could only find a very mundane shirt with the name on it. No imagination there!
The Uros Islands are floating islands built entirely out of reeds. The indigenous Aymaras, descendants of the Inca, built their floating islands so that they could hide from their enemies because they were fisherman, not warriors. The islands are about 1 acre in size, with about 10 families living in thatched huts made from reeds. The island is made with about 9 feet of reeds cut from the lake, then tied together, with another 9 feet of reeds laid flat on top. When you walk on the island, it is spongy under your feet. They make everything out of reeds: their houses, beds, cooking utensils, boats, etc. They even eat the reeds. We ate some and it tasted like spongy celery. It really wasn't bad!
The island is tied down to the bottom of the lake so that it doesn't float away. After ~20 years, the island starts to decay and smells so badly, they have to build a new one. The boats they make out of reeds are called dragon boats and they use them for fishing, for gathering new reeds, for transporting the whole village, and for relocating their homes to new islands when needed. They have a communal kitchen and generally eat together. There is no bathroom on the island and they can't use the lake because they drink the water with no filtration or sanitization. So, they store waste in pots and carry them to the mainland to bury wastes. They also have cemeteries on the mainland. The women do embroidery textiles that show their whole family and their way of life.
(See Photos)
The children go to school on another island until 6th grade, after which they go to the mainland for school and to learn to speak Quechua or Spanish, depending on which mainland they go to. Teenagers go to other islands to play volleyball to meet other girls and boys. When someone gets married, they move to the woman's island and build an extension on the island for an additional hut. Overall they are very healthy people and live to be 70-80 with no medical facilities; they still believe in and prefer the shaman. The island we visited had only been accepting visitors for about a year, but they've got the tourist thing down. Get a load of the slim, trim women there! They really have no means of exercise on an island 1 acre in size.
(See Photos)
More later - G&T