The Highest Navigable Lake in the World.

I'm still a bit speechless after our visit to Lake Titicaca, even though it was over a week ago. That lake is something that everybody should get to at least once in their lives... it is truly unbelievable! 

We left Cusco last Wednesday and began our massive excursion throughout Southern Peru. We drove south to Puno, the city right on the edge of the highest navigable lake in the world. We settled into a great hotel and snagged some dinner before crashing due to the big day ahead of us. We awoke on Thursday morning to luckily, sun! We grabbed our gear and went down to the water's edge.

Obviously Puno is a major tourist spot. There are hundreds of boats along the pier, it's crazy. We loaded up  into one and along with a local tour guide (who surprisingly wasn't too annoying), we hit the water. Our first stop on this glorious adventure was to Las Islas de los Uros. These islands are un-freaking-believable. They're made of reeds. Seriously. Reeds from the lake. It's insane! The native people on these islands (who speak the language of Aymara) are completely content living on these islands. It's a super interesting set-up--there are like 5 families that live on each of the mini-reed islands and each mini-reed island has it's own mayor (who can be a female, which is big for Peru). They've fully utilized the tourism industry to benefit their personal economic growth, which is also really interesting.

We got to have a brief tour of two of the islands, including inside the homes of these people. We all purchased little things from their mini-markets as well. It was a crazy amazing experience. When you pull up to these islands, you're honestly floored by the amazing structure and architecture involved in these people's homes. It's unreal.

After our amazing tour of the Uros, we embarked on a 2 hour boat ride to our next island--Isla Taquile.  The ride to the island was great--it was so refreshing to be traveling by water once again. As a Minnesotan, I definitely got a full dose of water on this venture which I'm extremely grateful for. We arrived at Isla Taquile and hiked all the way up to the top of the island. Puno is at an even higher elevation than Cusco, so we all suffered briefly from the altitude. We eventually made it to the center of the island which is jaw-dropping as well. 

Taquile is a decently large island with a Quechua-speaking population on it. It's a pretty amazing set-up, and it's much different than the Uros. One of the most interesting things is the major difference between the gender roles on the two islands--women have a lot of power on the Uros, but in Taquile, the women have to walk a certain number of steps behind their husbands. The differences regarding gender roles throughout this country are nuts! This country is crazily diverse.

We got to explore the beautiful artisan market on Taquile (they're incredibly well-known for their weaving) and then had a glorious lunch overlooking the water. We eventually hiked back down to the Marina and headed back to shore. What a glorious adventure. The water was eerily reminiscent of the massiveness of Superior, so I definitely felt like I was home. Overall, the Lake Titicaca was almost too much for words... I hope some of these pictures do it some justice... More on everything else to come soon!