LETS TALK TRAVELLING: Lake Titicaca

I got a bus for around 8 hours to a town called Puno, which is on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is the world’s highest lake so it’s often on many travellers bucket lists!

I could tell already when I got off the bus that it was much colder than Cusco - Jeans and Jumper were out! I stayed in Puno for 2 nights (1 night before and 1 night after the 2 day boat tour around Lake Titicaca). Puno was a fairly small town and to be honest I don’t think I would have spent any time there at all if it wasn’t for the fact it was conveniently located next to Lake Titicaca!

The boat tour started early in the morning with the first stop being only 30 minutes away from Puno at the famous man made floating island. The island had been there for over 300 years and many of the family’s had never lived on the mainland. I spent around an hour on the island - it was really interesting to meet the local family’s and hear how they built the island (out of reeds). I even got taken into one of the local’s houses, it was just a small room which 5 people lived in - there was 1 bed and half the room was taken up by the kitchen. It was a completely different way of life to anywhere else I’d been. The island needed to be rebuilt every 30/40 years to ensure it doesn’t sink - I was strange because I could actually feel it was floating especially when a boat went past!

Next we visited an island called Taquile which was 2 hours away from the floating island. From the top of the island you could see Bolivia and Peru as the lake borders bother countries. We stopped there to have lunch then we had some free time to explore the town. It was a beautiful island and it reminded me a little bit of islands in Greece, or the set of Mumma Mia! You almost forgot that it was a lake as it was so big!

The final stop for the day was just an hour away from Taquile and this is where I was going to be doing the homestay. First thing to do was to play football with the locals, apparently an on going tradition for all tourists who visit the island! Even though the locals have an unfair advantage by already being climatized to the altitude we still managed to win the football game! After the football we got paired up and greeted by our local family’s - thankfully I was paired with Sophie who has lived in Spain since she was 10 so is fluent in Spanish! The families kindly offered to dress us up in their traditional outfits which consisted of 3 skirts!! We went back to the houses of the local family’s and helped to cook dinner before heading to bed.

We were woken up at 7am to help make the bread for breakfast, which was deep fried in oil - a slightly different and unhealthier method to what I knew! After breakfast we were going to be helping the family’s on their farms. First we helped feed the animals - our family had 1 donkey, 2 pigs, 12 sheep, 1 dog and around 20 chickens so there was a lot of animals to feed! We were then given some time to wonder around the island and were able to visit the local school before going back to have lunch. For lunch we tried 4 different types of potato - apparently in South America alone they have over 4,000 different types of potato! After lunch it was time to say goodbye to our host family’s before going on the boat back to Puno.

It was the first time I’d ever done a homestay but it was so interesting to spend time experiencing a different way of life which was nothing like back home. Many of the families haven’t left the island let alone Peru, so it did make me feel extremely grateful for my ability to travel.