Puno - Ticitacasee

Tuesday evening, we took the bus to Puno. It took a bit of time to find the terminal, as even the taxi driver didn't really know his way around. Unfortunately, we had to sit separately on the night bus because we were a bit late. So Emily sat next to a sick person and I sat next to an eco-friendly person whose smell was very peculiar. We arrived in Puno at 5:30 in the morning. We are doing the tour from Cusco to Lima with a European company called Peru Hop. They even drop us off directly at the hostel/hotel/Airbnb.

Yesterday, unfortunately, we had to wait in the hostel lobby in the morning because check-in was not until 11:00 am, but we were able to get into our room by 9:30 am. To pass the time, we had breakfast at the hostel. In the morning, we explored Puno a little bit. Puno has some beautiful places. We walked to Lake Titicaca and enjoyed the view. In the afternoon, we took a trip to Sillustani. Sillustani is a pre-Inca cemetery on the shore of Lake Umayo. The landscape was really impressive and the lake was dark blue. In the evening, we went to bed quite early as everything was a bit exhausting. In Puno, it is about 9 degrees Celsius during the day and -1 degree Celsius at night. It felt like it was only 10 degrees Celsius in our hostel, so it was incredibly cold at night.

This morning, we got up at 5:40 am to pack our backpacks, check out, and have breakfast. At 6:45 am, we were picked up for a day tour.

We took a boat ride for about 25 minutes to the Uros reed island. There, we were shown how they separate reed blocks from the lake, turn them upside down, and cover them with about a meter of reeds. A reed block is about 3-4 meters high. The Uros reed island consists of 13 reed blocks, which are anchored so that the island doesn't float to Bolivia. 6 families, 25 people live on the islands. The houses and boats are also made of reeds. Each small house had a solar panel for electricity. We took a boat made of reeds to another island.

Afterwards, we continued on a motorboat to Taquile. It took us about 2 1/2 hours. 2,200 people live on Taquile. The island is 6 km long and 1.5 km wide. The highest point is at an altitude of 4,000 meters. From the island, you have a beautiful view of the dark blue Lake Titicaca. We had lunch at a local place and then went back to Puno.

Tonight, we will take the night bus to Arequipa. Hopefully, we can sit together this time.