We were at Titicaca to explore the local culture so our first boat stop was to the floating island community of Uros. None of us have ever heard of this culture so we were a bit surprised. Basically, the Urus live on about 5 m thick floating island made of reed and tied together, connected to the bottom with ropes and constantly filled with more reed on the top (as it rots in the bottom and shrinks). Each family, between 10-20 people lives on one of those and they are connected and work together mostly on tourist souvenirs. They speak Uru mostly, some Spanish. Maria, who was our guide, was fearless – if you’ve met her elsewhere you’d never know she lives on an island with no electricity, barely any bathroom and limited way to get to town. She was the boss – did all the weaving and showed us how they maintained the platforms and catch a fish with tied up cormoran who does it for them. She was a business woman all in – sold us on paying extra for their Mercedes Benz ride – a huge boat two people had to paddle to move – and asked for a payment right in the middle of the lake so we had no way out – I had to give it to her, she may have lived in medieval looking place but her mind was in 21st century and entrepreneurial. We purchased an obligatory souvenir from Maria and got back on the boat.

Next stop was an island of Taquile, secluded in the middle of Titicaca. The tribe living here are Taquilenos who seem to live a pretty simple life but got their shit together. They run their own travel agency, meaning you can only go through them to get there, eat there or do anything. They make threads (something I helped one of the women on the boat back, and it was a lot of work – my fingers were achy!) and the men knit – yes, the men knit. It was a little surreal to see ALL the men walking around and knitting – the boys were a little taken back. One stereotype to break. We had an amazing lunch of grilled fresh fish, salad and rice with soup with a view similar to Portofino – all alone.

All and all, the high altitude (12000m, even higher than Cuzco) was getting to us. Maxie was vomiting, we were all yawning, and sleeping was hard (just kept waking up). We were getting ready to get somewhere flat – which in Peru is not easy – and surely not by the train again. We were off to Lima, to live Peruvian city life, our last stop!