Got picked up at the hostel at 9am by mini bus for a tour to the floating islands of Lake Titicaca. It was a fairly short boat ride out on the lake to a huge area of reeds with the community of Uros which was made up of many islands made from reed mats with from 5 to 40 families living on each with a total of about 1200 people. We stopped on one of the islands and were given a display of how the islands were made and then the stalls came out and the women offered weavings and jewellery for many times the amount they would have sold for on the mainland. This particular island was quite small with 5 families. It smelled like rotting reeds and was quite squishy in parts where the reeds were level with the water-line. Quite amazing to see how they have lived that way for generations. There were some modern things like I saw a few solar panels on some of the islands and larger islands had buildings with corrugated iron roofs. Some painted yellow to better fit in with the thatched huts. We stopped on the main island on the way back and they had a restaurant, general store and even a “hotel”, three very basic rooms you could pay a ridiculous amount to stay the night in. (The insects would eat you alive!)

Back in town we had time for lunch before catching a bus to Bolivia. It was a three hour trip to Copacabana (no, not the one from the song…) on the Bolivian side of the lake. We filled in our customs forms for Bolivia and listened to the lone American on the bus whinge loudly about how she didn’t know she needed a Visa for Bolivia and how unfair it was she had to pay $135USD for it when no one told her and would she have time to get it at the border etc etc. The USA started making it hard for Bolivians to get US Visas a year or so ago because the Bolivian Government wasn’t doing enough to stop farmers growing Coca. So the Bolivians simply reciprocated and US citizens have to jump through the same hoops coming to Bolivia.

At the border we hopped off the bus and took our bags through the police station to get the police cards we were given on arriving stamped that we were leaving Peru, then next door to the customs to get our passports stamped as leaving Peru. After a 300 metre walk up a hill across the border we then needed to wait for half an hour for the sole officer processing all the incoming and outgoing people. Only took a second for him to stamp the passports when we got to the desk. Didn’t even look at our passport photos, just the Peru exit stamp and our transit card.

Outside we once again hopped on the bus for a short trip to Copacabana where we found a Hostel up a dark street in the rain. (After consulting our trusty Lonely Planet of course.)


Peru Photo Album link