I’m not sure I’d call Lake Titicaca a lake. We have lakes in Australia and Titicaca is more like an inland sea than a small body of water. It’s the highest and largest navigable lake in the world and at times all you can see it water on the horizon – no land or even mountains, just blue water as far as the eye can see.

Sitting at 3811 metres above sea level, the sky remains clear and azul, making the lake just as blue and a stunning sight to just sit and take in. It also means the days are warm, if not hot, but the nights are chilling cold. I woke up early for the 7:45am boat over the lake and arrived at the wharf. A lot of people take tours, paying the extra for a mini bus to pick you up at your hotel and taking the tourist boat. I didn’t want any part of that and caught the community boat instead.

The boat was loaded with locals from the Taquile Island. Boxes, pallets and all assortment of cargo were heaped into the centre of the boat, and when we were finally loaded the boat made its way from Puno and slowly chugged along the clear waters of Lake Titicaca. Aside from myself, there was only two other tourists, an Argentinian couple, and everyone else were locals.

The first stop was Los Urus, a collection of islands make from reeds. I mean literally made from reeds, the islands are packed with the reeds to make floating platform for the homes of the residence. The floating islands are one of the main tourist attractions on the lake, and you can tell they’ve taking up taking the gringo dollar with reed boats being paddled around the islands filled with snap happy tourists. Being on the community boat meant we didn’t get ushered somewhere to do the tourist thing. In fact we stopped briefly, giving us 10 minutes to look around, which we decided not to, and putted back off again towards Taquile Island.

It’s a good 3 hours to the island and finally we arrived at the dock. Myself and the
Argentinian couple were lead up the island to the Plaza Principle. It’s a fair climb up the island, the dock is naturally at the very bottom and it took about half an hour of walking up the mountain to reach to top. And at 4000 metres above sea level, it makes for a tough and somewhat breathless hike. Although my body seemed to have eventually acclimatised to this height, and it wasn’t as near as bad as Cajas National Park in Ecuador which is the same height and I couldn’t walk up a hill without taking a breath stop every 10 minutes!

The island of Taquile has been inhabited for a couple of thousand years, and not a lot has changed. They still dress in traditional clothing, with the men wearing caps
similar to a Santa Claus hat that denoted whether they were single or not – if that cap was half white, it meant they were single, and if it is all coloured (usually in red) it meant they were married. The women have a similar system, if a woman has a black shall on it meant they were single.

The staple of food is unsurprisingly trout. Lake Titicaca has an abundance of trout that has been fished since humans discovered the massive body of water. I had lunch with the Argentinian couple (his name was Michelle, can’t remember hers, it was something unusual) and it was trucha ala plancha – grilled trout. Went we asked whether they sell the trout to the mainland, the host laughed and shook his head, why would they sell their trout to other people when they can eat it? A fair sentiment! 

At the end of lunch we asked for coffee. The Argentinians needed their coffee to round off lunch (the trout was very nice too!) and they wondered whether the coffee would be instant. I told them that good coffee doesn’t seem to exist in Peru, or Ecuador for that matter, and it was a certainty that it would be instant. And out came the cups of hot water and satchels of Nescafe. Disappointed we all drank our bland coffees, but they assured me that in Argentina there’s proper coffee shops on every corner. And after a moments pause and thought, they also said in Chilli too, they have good coffee there.

It was time to leave for the boat back to Puno, and after climb more upwards to the summit of the island it was a step staircase down to the wharf on the other side of the island. You’d think walking down stairs would be as easy task, but at this height with clear sunny sky and the, oh lets say, thousand steps down, it
becomes quite tiresome. By the time I finally arrived at the bottom I had built up a sweat and my legs were aching!

The boat once again filled up with locals and a handful of tourists that has stayed the night on the island. Cargo and backpacks filled every corner and we barely fit
everyone aboard. Soon the boat was on its way back to Puno. We only broke down once, the engine stalled and we all sat in amusement as they took tools to the motor to get it started again. Well everyone but an American lady were finding the amusement in it, as she desperately asked anyone to borrow their mobile phone to call someone.

The engines started back up and we arrived back in Puno around 6pm. I headed back up to town and had a sopa ala Criolla with an Austalian couple that were the only others in the restaurant. They had just come from Copacabana in Bolivia and
told me of the protests in the border town. They had to get out at one end of the town and walk to the other side with their luggage to continue the journey.

The next morning I arrived at the bus terminal to say goodbye to Peru and make my way into Bolivia. I asked the girl at the ticket office about the protests, no they’re over now it’s normal, she informed me. The bus must have been three quarters filled with tour groups, the rest of us got relegated to the back seat to keep the groups together. I was a little peeved with this as I had bought my ticket
early to get a window seat and instead found myself wedged with four others on the backseat. It was only 3 hours to Copa so I just sucked it up said hello to my new backseat friends.

At the border the line at the immigration office was long. We stood in line for a good half an hour to get our exit stamps and the one thing that was worrying me was that I had only put down 60 days on my Peruvian visa. I had been in the country for 70. I didn’t think this was going to be a big deal, I was still under 3 months after all, however it did become a problem. They charged me $25US for
overstaying and I had to pay for them to photocopy my passport. I related this the Brazilian guy I was sitting next to on the bus and he laughed, anything to make a few extra dollars he cynically commented. Too true.

Walking across the Bolivian side the immigration office was obviously not Peruvian. Gone was the order, structure and any sense of what you’re supposed to do. I got my stamp, but they’d only do the visa for 30 days at a time, then stood in another line thinking that was the next step. Nope, that line was for US
citizens that need an entry visa and pay the entrance fee. I still wasn’t sure if I was done and stood in the next line and when I reached the officer he looked at my already stamped passport and told me to vamos. Fine, I jumped back on the bus and soon enough we were off and arrived in Copacabana 20 minutes later.

At the Copa, next!