Puno and Lake Titicaca

The best thing to do in Puno is to visit the Uros, it´s truely unique to Peru...and Bolivia. The Uros live on a small colony of floating islands built out of reeds since before Incan times.

I really had higher hopes, I thought the islands were just loose to float wherever, and I thought I could save the $3 boat fare by swimming out to them, conquering them in my own Wisconsinite way. Titicaca is too cold for locals to swim in, but for hearty Midwesterners it´s slightly warmer than Memorial Day swimming in inland lakes.

In reality they´re well anchored in a wetland that would be nasty to swim in. It´s a long boat ride through a channel of reeds, probably 3-4kms.

In the present day, the idea of living on reed islands way out in a lake, serviced by dirt cheap ferries is poverty. They got some bad press for pressuring tourists for money for photographs, but I would have preferred that, I can´t add any more weight to my cycling rig. Now they just really pressure you to buy souviners and (Peruvian) ballpark priced drinks, so I got two keychains and a beer.

If you make the trip out, you get to meet the president of one of the colonies, and they show off what they build out there. The best of it are these massive reed boats, but in the current day there´s some cheating, or improvements. The boats are only reeds on the outside, inside they´re stuffed with recycled glass and plastic bottles which float better than the reeds. Some of them are double-decker, but of course reeds alone can´t support fat European tourists, so it´s a wooden loft wrapped in reeds to hide the wood.

The Uros even eat the reeds that make up their island, when they´re still green anyways. They let us try some, not too bad.

Walking on the islands is sort of like walking in a barn with hay bales for flooring. Cooking on the islands is a problem because you could burn the whole place down, so they have some specialized pottery to raise up their fire.

Besides that, not much else, they have a school and hospital out there. They´re real buildings just set on top of probably real islands.

Another thing in Puno that absolutely made my day was the discovery of a toilet store near my hostel. Do I even have to say the punchline? No seats in the whole store! I saw three stores in Puno, and one in Juliaca, no toilet seats in any of them! Departmento de Puno is a silly place. My hostal had 25 gallon buckets of water stored up for the water blackouts, just like I was used to since Macusani. And no agua caliente! I was going to suffer through a cold shower before leaving, but I just heard the sound of water flowing from the showerhead back to the source.

One thing that made me sad was seeing pale colored sheepsheads for sale outside the stadium. And then a few corners later street dogs and traditional women digging through a pile of trash and rotten food right on the street. Rough scenes to see before bedtime.

Dead sheep don´t have to be sad though. Down south of Puno by Juli I saw the standard Toyota combibuses with their roof racks loaded as full as possible with strapped down sheep bodies! I really couldn´t tell if they were alive or not, the ones up front had their heads up high, but they were probably just flopping in the wind. Sorry I don´t have a photo to share, I had about 7 chances too, there were that many dead or tranquilized sheep going up north towards Puno.

I also saw live sheep taking the bus! One of the buses that whipped by had the back seat down and four live sheep in there, then one traditional woman and the driver. Made my day. I wonder if they paid 60 cents each just like anyone else.

Those traditional women really have great control over their farm animals. In the best case I saw 20 sheep, four alpacas, a few donkeys and some pigs all marching in a happy formation across the altiplanto. And they keep them out of the street until its time to cross, it´s all perfectly correographed. I think all it takes is a whip, and then association of the whip with the sound, Sshh. Looks like they spend some time with each new animal in small groups. I witnessed them chasing just two pigs around one afternoon, training them.

South of Puno there was a strange immigration checkpoint. These guys from Peru´s SUNAT agency dressed all in black, and black cowboy hats were standing in a tiny town with road cones out. Salsa music was playing. It was all verbal, seems like they just wanted to ask me questions in Spanish until they stumped me. They were all the same truck driver questions I´m used to, until they asked if I had children. I guess they must have said hijos instead of niños. Anyways, they had to switch to broken english, then seconds later I was allowed to pass.

I had a pretty bad night in ILAVE, Peru. I thought it was LLAVE (key en español), until I saw it in all caps on a bus. I foolishly left Puno for La Paz with just 100 soles ($30) in my pocket, I hadn´t used an ATM since Puerto Maldonado because there just aren´t any. Juliaca and Puno have them, but I forgot. Anyways, so in Ilave I didn´t want to spend money on a hostal, so I started setting up my tent in this crater thing to keep out of the winds that can be miserable. It was right off the main road, not even out of town, and these people kept stopping by looking at me like I was building a space ship. I kept getting the standard, "Its too cold! Go to the hostal!" BS that I´m sick of.

The dysentary bug bit again in the privacy of 3am, thank Jehovah, so nasty! I totalled my pair of pants in the panicked rush. Post disaster, I was standing out in that crater with no idea what to do. It definitely wasn´t all that cold, I had a nice time looking at the stars for a few minutes ignoring the miserable state at my feet. It´s probably good I´m traveling alone, I returned to my tent for more supplies in nothing but shoes and a coat. I´m still searching for some poor lavanderia where I can bring my clothes in shame.

The town of Juli does not have a catamaran to Bolivia, no matter what may be claimed on the Internet. The harbor has a really fancy building that is all boarded up, and then some rowboats.

I ended up taking the bus part of the way to some strange border town. Like usual, they tried to sell me an entire bus at first for 50 soles, a private bus to the border. The price for traveling with the fine people of Peru is 2 soles, 60 cents.

The same thing happened in Maldonado, I thought I´d ask the car ferry people for advice on jungle boating, thinking they´d be impartial. They tried to talk me into renting their extremely slow car ferry for a river cruise, and for a lot of money.

The same thing happened again in Copacabana, in Bolivia. I forgot about the timezone change, so I missed my boat to the island of the sun, and they tried to sell me a private boat for 300 Bolivianos.

I couldn´t believe the border crossing, after how much it´s been talked up online, it was much easier than advertised. I did fail to get the Bolivian visa in Puno though, just because they were out of stickers to attach my passport photo to the form. Not sure I believe that.

So the border is this stone arch at the end of a long uphill road. They pretend there´s a wall, but really it only extends a few hundred feet. No matter, there are no guards or anything watching, I could have just cycled through. It´s very voluntary, you have to walk into the Bolivian immigration office yourself. Then you find out you need to get an exit stamp from Peru, so you walk back across.

The visa is reciprocal, which means it costs Americans $135 in crisp $20 bills, just like it costs Bolivians to apply to the US. They have USD change, wrinkled $1 bills.

Really all you need is the money, a passport, the exit stamp, and a copy of your passport front page and yellow fever vaccination. They didn´t care to see my fake fancy hotel reservation in La Paz, a bank account printout or passport photo.

On the application form, they checked off that I had arrived by train, a train that doesn´t exist in that part of Bolivia, and crossed off some other complicated stuff.

Across the border people were noticeable more chill, waves and holas were not as frequently returned as in Peru, and the road was lower quality.

Copacabana is such a cheap resort town, it blew me away. I could afford a vacation there with my first job, The Bargain Bulletin paper route from middle school. That route paid 5 cents per paper delivered, or $7.50 per week I think. A couple weeks of that saved up and I could afford the $6/night hostal with a view of Lake Titicaca and hot water(!), and 15 cents for an apple. Dinner would be a splurge at $2 for a hamburger or $4 for fajitas. A boat ride to the Island of the Sun and back is only $2.25.

I had a pretty good time on the Island of the Sun, despite it being a tourist trap. I made friends with a Japanese traveler on the boat with poor English and worse Spanish. We only had an hour to walk around, and I convinced him to hustle to the peak of the island´s mountain. The lake itself is already at 3800m (12,500ft) elevation, so it´s a chore. We got up there in 45 minutes, took a few quick pictures and then had to flat out run down these rocky paths back to the boat.

Down at the harbor, five minutes late, some assholes tried to tell us our boat already took off, and maybe if I stopped to listen they would have tried to sell me a private boat for 400 Bolivianos. I saw the recognizable gringo with the stupid yellow hat on a boat and ignored them, and we made it.

(Sailboat geekout, ignore the following)
Immediately after getting back to Copacabana I walked right up to the sailboats for hire people, with the sun nearly setting, and handed over 50 Bolivianos for an hour, no negotiation. It´s a small price to pay for sailing on a janky pinewood boat at 3800m. It was just like sailing with me and my janky 1970s hobie catamaran, except now with a language barrier and worse components. I guess sailing terms in English are pretty much a language barrier already though. There were panicked moments at the start, the sail went up, then had to come right down again to retie the sail to the boom. It was basically a rowboat style, with the oars included (essential), and then a mast with three shrouds just like the hobie cat.

The main sheet block (block means pulley in modern sailing, and main sheet means...well nevermind) was really a block of wood screwed down to the inside of the hull. I guess that explains some things. You could tie the mainsheet to it with a quick release knot, then you just had the rudder to hold on to.

The rudder tiller was really just a tree branch, minus the bark. The boom and mast were tree trunks, I assume. Sailing does not have to be a rich mans sport, if you have a lot of building time and some farming ropes.

These boats really make some distance. That guy, Marceille, told me some tourists once rented his boat for over a month, they sail toured it all the way to Peru across the lake. Also, you can hire this guy to bring you to the Island of the Sun and back, it takes 3 hours each way. There´s always wind! Every day the wind blows towards the island in the morning, and back home in the afternoon. Not sure all that can be true.

My trip is almost over, I fly out of Lima on November 6th. Only five more days of dumbassing, better make it good!