Uros - Lake Titicaca's floating reed islands

From Puno, we went on another jaunt on Lake Titicaca, this time to visit a community that lives on floating islands made of reeds. Yes, they really are as mad as they sound - artificial islands made of reeds which people live on. An American guy we got talking to couldn't believe his eyes when he saw them - he only decided to visit them because of the strike in Puno and had been expecting a regular island. Instead, he saw this:

The Uros islands are the lake's most popular tourist attraction - they came about when the Uros people sought refuge on the lake to escape from the Incas. People still live on the islands today, although the guide book says it's possible that the people on the islands we visited (there are 70+) go back to the mainland at night to sleep.

Still it was fascinating; a 20 minute boat journey brought us to what was literally a floating community of dozens of islands, each with maybe half a dozen houses. The boats of tourists alternate between the different islands to spread the tourist love.

When we got to our island, we were given a talk about how they're made and maintained, with the help of a model.

There's some sort of earthy base that's anchored down and reeds are put on top. Fresh reeds are laid every fortnight or so, as they rot from the bottom. It felt very sturdy - I was expecting it to be a bit wobbly but it wasn't.

We also got to ride on what the guide described as a Mercedes Benz - a dragon-shaped boat made of reeds (and lots of plastic bottles) - the traditional mode of transport (minus plastic bottles back in the day), although ours had to be pushed along by a motor boat!

The community has everything like schools and a hospital, although the kids have to go to the mainland once they reach secondary school.

We went to what was described as the 'capital' but was really another island to buy souvenirs and have lunch.  

They had a trout farm there, so Paul and I had fried trout for lunch (we ate a lot of trout around Lake Titicaca!).  Despite it being quite a touristy experience, we enjoyed it - something we won't see elsewhere and it killed an afternoon of being blockaded in Puno.