Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay

Lake Titicaca

I visited Lake Titicaca on my way from Cusco to La Paz, via a stop in
Puno. I think I first read about the lake as a kid in an encyclopedia.
I don't know how old I was, but I remember forming a mental image of
"the world's highest lake" as being a sort of volcanic crater lake
high in the snows, surrounded on every side by impenetrable mountains
of ice and stone.

It's nothing of the sort, unfortunately.

An early morning boat took the Australian girl, Lotte, and I out to
Los Uros. The water was dirty, full of trash, overgrown by algae, the
tranquility broken by loud motors and diesel fumes. There're a large
number of reed islands in the lake, all setup similarly, and the boats
rotate which island they bring the tourists to.

The whole thing is a big dog and pony show. Each floating reed island
is home to one family group, made up of maybe 30 people in a handful
of distinct family units. An island measures maybe 50m in diameter.
There're reed huts around the edges. In the center, large benches made
of reeds are arranged in a semi-circle around a big poster showing the
lake and a few demonstration pieces.

When the boat docks at one of the islands, the show starts. There's a
short presentation about how the islands are created, some talk of
economies and industry, a bit of history, lots of pointing at the
poster, a few jokes. The islander giving the presentation shows how
the reeds are bound, the common fish they eat, the eggs of some of the
birds. They have tiny reed versions of everything to help with the
presentation. Tiny huts, onto tiny islands, tied by tiny ropes, with
tiny dolls.

After 20 minutes of this, the presentation ends. Each tourist is taken
by the hand and led into a separate hut by one of the families.
Inside, they show you the reed mobiles and miniature boats the men
make, and the rugs and jewelry the women make. There, alone in a hut,
sitting on a mattress which is not made of reeds, they ask you to
please buy these things as "memories" of the Uros people. This lasts
for five minutes before you're taken back outside to have even more
wares pushed, this time in a long row of impromptu stalls.

The rugs are beautiful. So are the miniature reed boats. The whole
thing, though, is just so polished. After pushing you to buy things,
they offer to take you to another island via one of the reed boats, at
an additional cost. As the reed boat pushes off, the women line up on
the sore, maybe four to six of them, and sing songs. The first two or
three little ditties are something local. After that, they do a
screeching rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. They finish with
a synchronised group wave and, "Hasta la vista, babies."

I felt sure they were going to do the macarena as well, if we'd only
stayed longer.

We spent about two hours out there and it was enough. I found it
exhausting. The most interesting parts of this little side trip
probably weren't supposed to be part of the trip at all.

The islands have solar panels, one panel per three huts. Each island
has at least one TV. The islanders go to shore in Puno to check their
e-mail. Some of them are huge soccer/football fans and recited to me
all of the leagues that they follow.

If you climb the towers they have on each of the islands, for
semaphore communication with each other, you see that outside of the
touristsy area, there're gobs of metal buildings as well. Some are
bare metal, some are metal with reeds stacked against the outside for
meager camouflage.

The reed boat we rode in to move from one island to another isn't just
reeds. The dual fuselage design is primarily plastic water bottles.
The Uros guide said 1000 of these litre bottles per side of the boat.
I boggled and asked again, but he confirmed it. Two thousand water
bottles, collected from the trash in the lake, repurposed for
buoyancy. I love that.

posted by daviduri @ 7:28 PM