We took a two day tour of some islands in Lake Titicaca on our own. Kim already wrote about this in more detail so I won’t, but we recommend doing one of the 60 sole tours instead of buying your ticket direct from the boat captains of the islands. The boat captains lied to us repeatedly and were impossible to find after they lied. Nobody took any responsibility. Basically we were promised a visit to 3 islands and their boats only took us to 1 before the captains disappeared and dumped us of on a tour boat.
Aside from that hassle, the trip was nice. We went direct to Amantani, where there is no electricity even though there’s wires for it. Apparently they used to run the lights at night off a big generator but it was too expensive. It was hard to get any information out of anyone though since they mostly speak Quecha to each other, and only spoke Spanish to us when we pulled it out of them with repeated questions. We stayed with the captains family, so the wife brought us home, pointed to our room and then didn’t say anything else to us for a long time. We took a nap, then thought they were going to walk with us around the island since they said they would. When that time came though, just the son went with us as far as the town square and pointed at the road that would bring us to the ruins on the island and said he’s meet us again at the town square before sunset.
We hiked up to the top of the island to see Pachamama and Pachatata temples, which were pretty basic but had nice views. We saw more tourists and realized that there was a port on the other side of the island too that most of the tourists were coming up from. After watching the sunset and buying some fried dough at the tourist stand on top of Pachatata, we went back for dinner with the family. Eating with them was strange since there was a table, but we were almost the only ones who sat at it. Most of the family sat on small benches on the floor. The captain actually was there for dinner and we were able to talk to him a bit more, but still almost of the conversation was in Quechua.
The next day we ended up with a tourist group since our captain was nowhere to be seen, even in his own house or at the docks. Very frustrating. It turned out good though since we met another couple, one of them Canadian the other Belgian, with a lot in common and spent a lot of time talking to them. We all went to Taquile, which is another small island in the lake that’s known for their weaving and interesting customs. We hiked over the island, looked at their wares and ate lunch before boating back to Puno.
In Puno we had to pay 10 soles extra to go to Uros, the reed islands, since our captain never stopped there like we were promised. The islands are very touristy, but I thought they were sweet. Everything in their lives revolves around reeds. The islands are made of reeds, the boats are made of reeds, they even eat the reeds along with fish and whatever they buy from town. The lives of the islanders are obviosly very changed from what they once were since they now have solar panels, use metal for the roofs and have a lot of contact with nearby Puno, but it’s still a very novel way to live.