Puno – Lake Titicaca and the floating islands

Finally left Cusco, slightly hungover, on New Years Day (at 7am eeek!!) and headed for the town of Puno, this is the main town on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca (the worlds highest navigable lake!). Puno is a very grey and dull town where all the buildings look unfinished, grey concrete shells with steal rods pretruding from them as if awaiting another floor to be built! Time spent here is definatly better away from the town and on the lake – Titicaca is a huge expanse of water, stretching as far as the eye can see with the sky reflecting in its clear water. There are many islands to explore, but by far the strangest and most fascinating is 'Uros', the floating islands. They are made up entirely of reeds from the lake, with whole communities living on them in reed houses, fishing in reed boats, going to school in reed schools and so on….. tools, chairs, hats everything is made of reed (even the international phone box hee hee!). The islanders are very poor and try to make a living from the lake, however tourism has hit and it now seems like a little floating circus with the people trying to earn extra income from selling reed goods and taking tourists out on the reed boats etc.