Lake Titicaca

6:30 the next morning, we were up and ready to take our tour of lake Titicaca. We were picked up from our hotel and boarded a small comfortable boat. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world that straddles the border of Peru and Bolivia.

We were all so excited to be on a boat. In our trip so far we had taken so many types of transportation: Planes, trains, cars, zip lines, paragliding, walking, hiking swimming, and how we were adding boat.

Just 45 minutes off the shore of Puno, we reached the floating Uros Islands. These Islands have been around for hundreds of years and are made up of reeds that grow all over the lake. Not only are the islands comprised of reeds but the houses and just about everything else on the Islands are made from these reeds too. They even eat them! We got to try them and they are pretty tastey actually.

Eric, could not seem to wrap his brain around the concept of living on a floating island and didn’t understand why these people didn’t just move to the mainland. I tried to explain to him that he was using his US mentality to try to make sense of the Andean culture. To me it was simple. These people don’t leave the house when they turn 18. Their whole life is their family and they stay with them from cradle to gave. Leaving home is mutinous. But still, it seemed to me the Uros existence on the island was no longer about tradition and all about tourism.

After the floating islands we got back on the boat and went into the lake another 2 hours till we got to a natural island named Taquile which has about 3,000 inhabitants. The City of Puno is incredible isolated. It’s 12,500 feet up in the Andes mountains and very inaccessible. These people were living on an island, 3hours away on a modern boat from Puno. This island is probably the most remote place I have ever been in my life. It was pretty crazy.

My group seemed to love Puno and Lake Titicaca. They thought it was mystical and beautiful. I don’t know why, but Puno made me feel weird. I wasn’t a happy, relaxed tourist as I had been in all the other places we had visited. I couldn’t shake the idea from my head that this place was hopeless from a development standpoint. These people lived so poorly and isolated that I couldn't foresee their situation improving in my lifetime.

The original Inca gods are said to have emerged from the waters of Lake Titicaca. For the Andean people, the lake is wrought with folklore and legend. Stephanie loved the floating Islands and Eric was fascinated with the stone arches and history of Taquile island. Lake Titicaca was exactly what I was expecting. And while others were blown away by it’s awesomeness, I must admit that I didn’t find it all that impressive.

There was very little to see or do in the town of Puno. We took some recommendations from our Lonely planet book and went to bars and restaurants. Since Puno was so poor, everything was very cheap, espeically in comparison to Cusco. We ate some of the best food we had on the entire trip in Puno. The boys found their favorite bar in all of Peru there as well.

Saturday night was the boys last day in Peru. They had a flight our Puno at 9 on Sunday morning back to Lima. From Lima they stopped in El Salvedor and finally arrived in San Francisco around midnight. All three of the boys had work that Monday morning. Most people I know, would want a good nights sleep before that, but the Lucchessi brothers. They didn’t sleep at all. Instead, they drank all night long. Ryan knocked on my door at 5 in the morning to tell me all about he was the only white guy in the entire club and amazing his night had been.
They were so drunk at 7 in the morning when the van for the airport came to pick them up. It’s a wonder at all they made every single one of their connections. I was very sad to see them go. There wasn’t a moment with these boys that I wasn’t smiling of laughing. They were the best travel companions I could have asked for.
Stephanie was relieved to see them go so she could start phase II of our trip: the relaxing phase.