Exploring Lake Titicaca and Its Remarkable Floating Islands

Discovering Lake Titicaca

We're coming to the end of our time in Peru and on the trip today we could see Bolivia which gave us aome anticipation for tomorrow when we cross the border.

We saw Bolivia from Lake Titicaca. We started at 7am from the hotel where the cycle tuktuks picked us up and took us to the harbour. We got on a decent boat compared to the motorised bath tubs we'd got used to on our last tour and our first stop was the floating islands. These are islands made from reeds and mud which as the name suggest can move but in general they are anchored down. They last about 50 years and then new ones are built. There are just under 200 of these each have homes for a family or small group. Interesting to see they now have televisions and solar panels.

They were first created back in Inca times or earlier. Nowadays seem to be heavily supported by tourism and a couple have hotels on them. However still interesting to hear how families lived on them both now and in the past.

After this we went to a second island where we had lunch and a walk up and down a very steep hill. At the top was a market square although no market today! It looked like something straight out of a western. The views from the top were brilliant as has the general scenery as we crossed the lake.

A change of weather

On the way back we watched a lightning storm over the mountains and we were heading into some ominous looking clouds but all cleared quickly. We are in rainy season but our guide has said that it should have arrived November and still not here.