Day 15: Visiting the Uros Floating Indigenous Village on Lake Titicaca and Exploring the Marshes Near Our Lodge

by Margaret · Published January 21, 2019 · Updated February 2, 2019

Our lodge offers about 15 different excursions, ranging from bike rides to visits to nearby ruins. Here’s what we did today:

Floating Islands

After breakfast we took a van to Puno, then a 20-minute boat ride out to see the “floating islands” — home to the Uros people, who’ve made floating villages made of dried reeds their homes since the Incan empire days.
Our guide Alberth from the hotel is Uros and grew up on the reeds so it was cool to go with him.
We were greeted by a family and shown how the islands are constructed and maintained, as well as how they built their homes and cook their food. We got to visit one of the homes and took a ride on a traditional boat too.
It’s hard to tell if the tourism helps the Uros maintain their traditional way of life, or whether they maintain their traditional way of life for the tourism. Our guess is it’s something in between.
The ground undulating under your feet as you walked felt cool. Like a big waterbed village.
The kids quietly took it all in – no giant wow, but definitely intrigued (confused?).
Note: The original offer was an all-day excursion: a 1.5 hour boat ride each way to the islands and back followed by a bunch of other visits on the boat. We asked for a car ride to the islands and no other stuff. We were back by lunch and it was def the right call.

Marsh visit

One of the excursions our lodge offers is a row through the marsh to discover the wildlife there. Wouldn’t be my first choice, but it was the obvious, perfect choice for the kids.
Alberth, who was raised on the lake, rowed us around and found us nests with eggs to examine.
His bird-calling skills were top notch. Willa’s face when he started doing it: terrified/curious. Like, what is going to happen when the birds hear that??
Turns out, nothing. Restless James’s knocking around in the boat scared everyone off.
One of the eggs Alberth picked up was preparing to hatch, and he held it up to our ears to hear tiny peeping from inside!! Crazy. Another one, blue, actually had a little beak pecking out.
The light on the reeds was gorgeous.

Afternoon/evening

Willa returned to her “happy place,” the rocks outside our lodge, where she climbed and climbed. She found a few new nooks, made shadows puppets in the light and at one point, fell and knocked her head. Tears, but quickly got over it. “Now I know to walk slowly.”

The lodge set up sundowner cocktails and a fire pit with blankets. Teddy and I chatted with some of the other guests (two travel agents and a Brit who was experiencing the place solo because his wife had such bad altitude sickness she had to stay in her room).

A local woman was sitting in the field below with her dog and her flock of sheep, also enjoying the end of the day in her pink skirt.

Meanwhile the kids were taking a ridiculously elegant bubble bath in Lobsy’s room, drawn by the staff (I mean). Flower petals and all. Please don’t judge.

Buuuut, that’s when I crashed – terrible sledgehammer of altitude sickness. Teddy wasn’t well either so we both sat out dinner – Lobsy ate alone in the big beautiful dining room!
The hotel came up with the oxygen tank and within 20 minutes I was a new woman. Slept from 9 pm to 6 am!!

Observations/Notes/Learnings:

Willa is totally into Cam Jansen books, which were my favorite growing up. Fans will recall Cam has a photographic memory and says “click” when she wants to remember something. Willa has been very earnestly saying “click” and then asking us to test her memory.

The colorful traditional skirts and shawls are not just for tourists nor special occasions. Every woman we’ve seen over a certain age, even on the remote farms where there are no tourists, are dressed this way.

Funny: On the van ride back from Puno we played a 20-questions person guessing game. Winning guesses were: Grace Voorhees, Byrne O’Brien, Jon Debord, Bob Marley, Mona Lisa, Father Leo O’Donovan and our tour guide Alberth. Pretty sure that group of people has never been listed in the same sentence ever in the history of sentences.

This hotel is really spectacular. Not glitzy, but one of those places that is beautiful and understated and luxury. Most people spend their days out on excursions, but for those who hang back, there are a million places to cozy up with a book, game, sketchpad and enjoy a cup of tea or pisco sour. The views are breathtaking, and it smells like wood-burning stove.