Floating islands (Or is it a raft?)

Arrivedin Peru, first stop - Puno. The next day the intrepid explorers headed out onto Lake Titikaka again. This time to visit the islands on the Peruvian side of the lake. The first stop was the Island of Uros.

The Uros are a group of native Peruvians who got rather fed up with all the fighting and decided to step out of things (kind of like the Swiss) and start up a life floating on the lake. To do this they built and continue to build their own islands out of the reeds that grow in the lake. In the rainy season they uproot the root systems of the reeds and drag these to wherever they fancy living and lash them together, providing them basic floating capability, they then interlace the reeds ontop of the roots and finally complete their islands with several houses and a high communications tower so that they can have a chat to other groups oin different islands. The reeds ontop of the roots have to be replaced every couple of weeks and a completely new island built each year. Each island has between 5-8 houses/families living on them, however if you are not getting on with everyone, you can always chop away their part of the island and watch them float away!

Next stop was the Island of Taquile, sadly this time with very little time to really see the island. The boat takes a good couple of hours to get there leaving us with only 1.5 hours on the island. When you consider that you have to fit in lunch, traditional dancing and a trip round the weavers there is very little actual time. The weaving is quite interesting, they make 5 different types of hat for the tribes, the type of hat indicating the marital status for the wearer. The pictures of one of us dancing will be shown on our return!