Llama, Floating Islands, Lake Titicaca

Our second last full day spent mostly on Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake on the planet.

Departing the hotel this morning for the outing we had the delightful sight of a Llama in the hotel driveway.

S/he was eating grass from the hotel lawn

First stop was the floating islands just off shore from the city of Puno. These islands have about 2,000 inhabitants. Their islands and the buildings constructed on them are created from the reeds abundant in the area. The inhabitants are taking advantage unabashedly of the tourist market.

The welcoming committee for our group

Each island has a President and the President of the island we visited, with our local guide, demonstrated how each island is created and maintained.

The President (of 22 people!) left; our local guide right

The womenfolk then demonstrated how they barter their respective goods at the local market. Very noisy and funnier than the following image suggests.

We took a sort of leisurely joy ride on their local water taxi; each island appears to have one. Local children joined us on board, some even doing the rowing and they also sang songs in their local language as well as in English, French and German. Surprise, surprise the cutest looking child took her hat around for donations. In addition to any donation each passenger was charged 10 Peruvian Soles (approximately $A4.40) for making the trip. Other taxis on the water at the time carried Japanese, American and British visitors.

Their mothers saw us off with songs that included 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' before our 15 minutes return sailing.

Our 'taxi' sailing away with the children on board following our trip

Following the floating islands visit we then motored by ferry for 45 minutes to another spot, a somewhat remote one for lunch. Lake Titicaca is very large, over 8,000 square kilometres according to our guide. About half the lake is in Peru and the remainder in Bolivia.

The lunch spot was beautiful and peaceful. Here are three images of the view from our lunch spot. The first looks north-west, the second looks north and the third looks north-east with Bolivia in the distance.

Following lunch we had to negotiate a steep set of stairs to catch our chartered ferry home. The man closest to camera in the last image is our Tour Director. He has done a terrific job managing our group through all manner of unexpected issues and personal difficulties. In this image he is carrying an oxygen cylinder. A number of our group have had problems in the high altitude and have had to receive oxygen. Despite being asthmatic and experiencing several shortages of breath I have managed to get by without a puff on the cylinder nor from the personal Oxishot cylinder each of us was issued.

Tomorrow, (Wednesday in South America), we fly back to Lima and the following day Hn and I will fly home to Sydney via Santiago and Auckland.