Taquile Island

Saturday 16th March 1988

I awoke with the sun and crammed my sleeping bag, coat and a bottle of rum into my “Pro-Bears” holdall bag. I walked down to the docks at 07:00 hrs and was almost immediately asked if I wanted boat passage to Taquile Island.

I filled in the usual details on the guys clipboard and sat on the bow deck of the motorboat “Rayo” while the crew touted for more customers. We finally set sail at 08:30 hrs. with a multinational group of passengers.

Most of them had paid 500 I/- at the various tour offices in town but I only had to pay 250 I/- for a return ticket. The 500 I/- was supposed to include a nights accommodation on Taquile Island but someone had forgotten to tell the islanders!

Enroute, we stopped off at the floating rush islands of Los Uros. On Lake Titicaca, one ancient people, the Uros, live on islands made of living reeds that float around the lake. The Uros people have been living on the lake for hundreds of years—they were forced to take up residence on the floating islands when the Incas expanded onto their land. In the shadow of the Andes, on the world’s highest navigable lake, they make their living from fishing and from selling their reed handicrafts to tourists.

The Uros use the totora reed, which is plentiful along the edges of the lake, to make their homes, their furniture, their boats, and the islands they live on. Their boats, which are shaped like canoes, but with animal heads at the prow, are used for fishing and to bring visitors out to the islands, which are usually moored to the bottom of the lake but can be moved if necessary. As reeds disintegrate from the bottom of the islands, which are four to eight feet thick, residents must add more to the surface, which is soft and occasionally spongy.

Each island has a collection of simple, reed houses, and the biggest island has a watchtower: originally, the mobility of the islands was used as a defence mechanism. Even tiny outhouse islands have been created, and the ground roots of the outhouse islands help absorb the waste. But despite the traditional lifestyle, the Uros people are not against modern amenities. Some families have motorboats or solar panels, and the main island is home to a radio station that plays music for several hours each day.

We stopped at this tiny spongy raft with about ten huts on it and a mass of kids asking for propinas (tips or gratuities). We walked about on the dodgy reed surface which felt like walking on a balloon filled with water and saw women selling model reed boats and woven crafts. Other folk in colourful traditional dress were gutting small fish and laying them out in the sun to dry.

We set sail again after twenty minutes leaving a horde of kids yelling for pens and sweets. We continued across the vast blue lake heading east. It was cold despite the glaring sun in a clear blue sky. I dozed on the foredeck with a French girl and a couple of elderly Scotsmen armed with a load of bananas to give to the kids on the island.

At 12:00 hrs. noon we pulled up at the jetty on Taquile Island and began the steep climb up the more than 567 steps to the Island Reception Centre. The island was colourful, cultivated with different crops on a multitude of terraces.

Local men in multicoloured knitted pointed hats and waistcoats carried sacks of empty Coca Cola bottles and other goods for return to Puno down the irregular stone steps to the boat.

At the top of the stairs we registered in the visitors book by an arch built of dry stone without any mortar, and topped with crude carved stone busts and animals.

I was allocated to a room with two Germans, Reinhard and Anita. Our host led us across the beautiful island, where the only noise was the sound of bird song, on an irregular stony trail to his house by the school.

Above: Our accommodation on Taquile Island.

Our bedroom was a tiny mud brick cubicle with a padded L-shaped ledge to sleep on. The wall was half covered with rushes, and we had a rickety table, a map of South America and a 1986 calendar for decoration. It was very quaint and cosy.

We dumped our stuff and went up for lunch in the “restaurant” by the Island Reception Centre and Folk Museum. We ducked our heads to enter into the low thatched mud hut and took our place at one of two tables. One end of the room was partitioned off with a sheet and this formed the kitchen.

An old Indian woman popped her head over the sheet occasionally to take orders. We had fish and rice as the day trippers got ready for the return trip to Puno. We drank Coca Cola in the yard outside the restaurant while the owners’ kids played around us and tried to persuade us to supply them with pens, sweets, money, etc. The eldest lad concentrated on weaving a bracelet which he had fastened to one bare big toe to keep the tension on.

We walked down into the small collection of huts fashioned from mud blocks with corrugated metal roofs which formed the main “town” on the island. We continued into the main square with it’s official building, it’s church and it’s warehouse-like shop selling artisan goods. The knitwear and weavings were nice but expensive compared to Puno.

We walked around the island in the sun. Women were at work in the fields, chiselling away at the clayey soil while the men wove traditional hats, and the children ran and played in the dirt. The brilliant blue lake spread off into the distance to the distant mountains.

The dust on the tracks preserved every fine detail of our footprints. Reinhard went back for a nap while Anita and I went back to the village for a coke. A group of locals all pitched in to build another small house on one of the terraces.

We sipped our cokes as an evening chill fell. A German couple gave sweets to a couple of cute children who wasted no time in running to get all of their chums. The couple handed out more sweets and balloons, but the initial joy turned to tears as the kids squabbled over the spoils.

As the sun set over the island Reinhard, Anita and I followed the rocky trail from our room to the village square. We decided to eat in a restaurant on the plaza. Local youths played volleyball in the failing light and one of the kiddies from earlier walked around still clutching his balloon with a happy smile on his face.

We ate omelettes and pancakes as a lethal kerosene lamp occasionally threatened to burn the place down. The German couple were the only other customers in the café. We sat in silence most of the time while the owner struggled to control the dangerous oil lamp.

My suggestion to return to our room and drink some of the rum that I had bought was warmly greeted with approval. We borrowed a torch as the trail was dodgy enough in daylight. We passed a hut where the locals were grouped together singing.

Back in our cosy cave we shared the rum bottle, drinking it neat because there were no mixers available. We chatted happily and munched biscuits until the 1 litre rum bottle lay empty. Occasionally the little girl who lived in our house peeped in to see what the funny gringos were up to. We slept well that night on our padded ledge.