An amazing day seeing the way the people of this Lake Titikaka area live. Our first stop alongside the road, on our way from Puno to the lake, was to watch a woman braiding rope from the tortura reeds which grow in the lake. Apart from the rope, she also makes mattresses from the reeds which are used by everyone on their stone beds – the reed mattress is covered with a layer of wool, and then blankets. Evidently she can make about six of these a day and each one sells for 15 soles ($5.50 or so).
we continued on using winding, country roads seeing the farmers preparing their fields with oxen and ploughs, bending over to manually weed and work getting ready to plant. We ended up at the delightful village of Liquina where we walked down from the road, through the village to our lunch host, the village mayor/elder/shaman who sees the benefit of tourism and has started a small B&B! A table was set up for us overlooking the lake and we were served the typical quinoa soup, lake trout and a variety of potatoes cooked by his daughter. Afterwards, he and his son played some music and we had a Q&A session that was both fun and informative.
After lunch we strolled to the lakeside for a boat ride back to Puno via the floating Uros villages Where the entire floating village is built from the tortura reeds. Amazing!