The Floating Islands

Yet another early morning start today (0600hrs). But, surprisingly, we didn’t hate waking up before the sun today... We were off to see the famous Uros Islands!

After a lovely breakfast we all bundled into the bus which took us to Lake Titicaca. The Lake is known to be the highest navigable lake in the world, and it looked absolutely GORGEOUS in the early morning sunlight!

The floating reed islands were amazing. We met the president of one of the islands, and received an informative demonstration of how the islands ‘worked’ – as in, how they managed to stay afloat, even with the people living on the island. We were given the opportunity to dress up in the traditional clothing of the natives, and were all shocked at the brightness of the colours. But for me, the highlight of seeing the reed islands was the boats. Well, actually, one type of boat in particular - the Mercedes Benz.

After riding on the native boats to another island, we were told that we had to walk for our lunch. So, after taking a few deep breaths, we started our ascent up the island (remember that we are at 3,800m so every step is a big effort). Thank goodness we didn’t have to walk up 500 stairs! We took an ‘easier’ way up instead...only 250.

After struggling to the top of the island, we were greeted with the most amazing lunch I have ever tasted. For starters we had vegetable soup with bread, and for the main course we had trout with potatoes and rice, or for vegetarians, egg omelette potatoes and rice. It tasted DIVINE! (Ed. The best meal in Peru so far)

After lunch we walked down the 500 steps to where the boat was moored waiting for us, and the views were absolutely amazing. All I could think of was ‘imagine waking up to a view like this every day’! We bundled back onto our boat and sailed the few hour journey back to Puno.

We’re getting things ready for the project now, buying materials and food etc. Just so you know we’ll be out of contact for a few days as the school which we are working in has no Wi-Fi.and because we’ll be in the middle of nowhere no access to internet Sorry!

PS – The Quote of The Day:

While sailing in our little boat we were bashed by a Mercedes Benz, and Avneesh said “Had to be a woman driver!”. How ironic that we were in an 8000sqkm Lake and yet she STILL managed to bash into us!

Written by: Fauzia