Lake Titikaka

This morning I woke at 4:00 am after a restless sleep and we got up about 6:00 for our 8:00 boat trip on Lake Titikaka. We visited the most amazing floating villages! To get to the boat we road in bike taxis, I would upload the picture of us on it but I can't flip pictures on this computer so that will have to wait until we are home.

These floating villages are made of the reeds that grown in the lake, really quite amazing. Each little island consists of about 7 families. They have been living like this for centuries, only recently started to have tourist visit their homes to make some money as even these remote people need money in these days. I will include some pictures of the villages, they are so clean after the dirty streets in Puno or for that matter anywhere we have been. Each of us visited a different home to see how they lived after we had been given a demonstration on how they build an island. After our visit to their homes we all dressed up in native costume and did a dance with them. Bob is in the pink and he danced very well. They have a 2 year old condor as a pet, he is hugh, we can't imagine how big he will be when full grown. The condors live to be about 90 years. After all these adventures we road in a reed boat across to another island to see the kids in school. They sang to us in many different languages and then we left them with pencils and books, the kids were so excited!

It will be easier to tell you how they build these islands when we talk to you so look forward to that conversation. Interesting, if a number of people from different islands want to have a party say for a wedding they just connect up their island and tow it to where they are having the party. Another scenario when a young man gets married and his island already has enough people on it he will pull together another 5 0r 6 families (friends or family) and build another island. He can then cut away his section of the island where his home is, tow it to where they want their new island and then build their island around his home!!! As I said amazing.

I took it very easy this morning on this visit as I was still very fragile and my fingers were tingling. We returned to the hotel where I will spend the afternoon. Bob took off with the group to visit an ancient burial grounds. I will have to see how many pictures he takes and how much he of few words will tell me about the afternoon.