Christmas, it’s fair to say, was a bit of a write-off, with
the entire few days pretty much spent holed-up in the Wild Rover hostel, and
catching up on the partying we missed out on over the previous few weeks. The
Wild Rover, is, as the name suggests, and Irish-run hostel and is very, well,
wild. I couldn’t as much attempt to keep up to date with the blog before
someone shouted “Happy Hour!” and a Jagerbomb was thrust into my hand. We were
received by the owners Colm and Liam with typical Irish hospitality and we were
promised a whale of a time, which would include a Christmas dinner and pretty
much party after party. We had heard rumours and friends’ reports of the
legendary parties, so this was gonna be our bit of tacky “Oirishness” over the
Christmas hols; hell, if we didn’t have a piss up, it’d make us even more
homesick!
Our room was a little like a brothel / dungeon with its lack
of outside windows and dark red walls. But for the amount of time we planned to
stay outside the bar, this didn’t really matter to us. We, party we sure did, 4
days on the trot of White Russians, Mojitos, Rum and Cokes, combined with
cheesy Christmas music and random banter with strangers, who would later become
good friends. Of course, we met many an Irish person but we had great laughs
with some Kiwis, some Yanks and Canadians, as well as bumping into Hannah and
Ellen again, from Britain.
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| Market ladies |
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| Christmas Eve markets in Cusco |
On the 4th day, we were broken, shadows of our
former selves and suffering severe cases of beer blues. We booked ourselves a
night bus to Puno, right on Lake Titicaca, our last stop in Peru before
crossing the Bolivian border in time for New Years, where it was set to be
another Irish piss up in the Wild Rover in La Paz.
Puno is, well, a shit hole, but people generally just stop
off here in order to see the Floating Islands of Lake Titicaca. We did just
that, booking a 2 day, 1 night tour with our hostel, the Walk On Inn. It cost
us 90 Soles, which was almost half of what the tour company in Cusco were
quoting us. We arrived at around 5am in Puno, with enough time to leave our
bags at the hostel, pack a small overnight bag and grab some breakfast before
we were picked up by our tour minibus to the lake at 8am. Here we were shuttled
on to a small boat, with an engine the size of a pea, which would, very slowly
take us across to the Floating Islands of Uros. It took about an hour of
sailing to get to the islands, set among a vast amount of reeds. We were
immediately struck by how Disneyland-ish it looked, very much geared towards
tourism, as that’s their only way of making money. There were brightly-coloured
souvenirs to be bought and large, elaborate reed boats, reminding me of some
kind of organic Royal Barge, which could take you around the island for a small
fee, if you fancied something more manual powered than our diesel boat. It all
looked like a kid’s playground, and we stopped off at one island and
disembarked, to have a wander around and to learn more about the islands. There
were 4 families living here in small reed and wooden huts. Our guide gave us
the low-down on how the islands are made, how they build their huts and how the
inhabitants can even pull the islands together and anchor them in the event of
a wedding or something similar, in which many people would be congregated
together. I, an eternal skeptic, wasn’t sure how much of it I was believing,
and whether it was all nonsense or not. It seems like it would be very hard to
live on such a tiny island, when each of them can sustain only a small amount
of vegetation and food. The only meat
source scuttling around too are the guinea pigs, who even have their own cute
little reed huts. As we sailed away, I could quite clearly see the reeds
growing from the lake-bed below, so im not sure as to how deep the water
actually is in that area of the lake. Hhhhmmmm, I don’t know!
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| Local Floating Island residents |
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| Disneyland! |
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| Floating Islands |
From here, our next stop was Amantani island where we were
to spend the night with a host family. When we arrived after an arduous 3 hour
boat ride, we were introduced to Gladys, our very miniature host for the night,
in whose house we would sleep and eat. We joined forces with a very friendly
Brazilian couple and we were shown to our sleeping quarters. The bed had a
straw mattress, but all in all, It was less basic than our accomdations in the
Colca Canyon! Lunch and dinner were very basic indeed, but you could tell that
these people had nothing, so for tjem, this was probably the best thing they
could dish up. The kitchen was itself, like something from National Geographic,
with its clay walls, one pot on an open fire and a mat for people to sit on. We
humbly ate our meal of maize and squeaky cheese, knowing that they’d sacrificed
the best rooms of the house for us. That night, a “fiesta” was organised with
the locals, where we were once again dressed up in local clobber and attempted
to dance with as much grace as we could muster. To be honest, we found it all a
bit staged and we were more interested in the massive thunderstorm outside
which was lighting up the sky with bots of purple and pink lightening. We left
about an hour after we arrived, just in time to tuck ourselves into bed before
the rain and hail started, and we eventually dosed off to the sound of rumbling
thunder.
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| Awesome lightening storm! |
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| The homestay's kitchen |
The next morning, after our pancake breakfast, we said
farewell to Gladys and her daughter and left for Isla Taquile, an hour away and
just as picturesque. We walked around the island, about 2km, and had a nosey at
some of the local knitted handicrafts. There was a lunch organised for us on a
fabulous hilly location overlooking the vast sparkling blue lake. With the
quaint little laneways, small brick and clay huts, tall trees and sweeping
views, it reminded me very much of Sicily or what I’d imagine Tuscany would be
like. We walked down the hill towards our awaiting boat on the banks of the
lake and commenced the 3 hour boat ride home to Puno.
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| our lunch venue! |
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| Taquile island |
After the 2 days, I cannot help but think that the tour is a
desperate attempt to get people to the islands and thus increase monetary
income for the inhabitants. As beautiful and picturesque the islands are, there’s
very little of interest to see apart from the scenery, so maybe a 1 day tour
taking in all the islands would have been sufficient. I am glad I saw them and
the weather was very much on our side during the trip which added to the
enjoyment, but I think it’s a case of “OK, been there, done that, now let’s
move on”. So we booked ourselves our bus to La Paz, which would include, what
we heard, would be an interesting border crossing!
How much?: 70 Soles per double room per night, private bathroom
Where we stayed in Puno: The Walk On Inn http://www.walkoninn.com/
How much?: 60 Soles
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