Home stay on lake titicaca island

I've just returned from two days I'm lake titicaca.

I set off early on Friday morning with a group of about 15 tourists in a 15m ferry to get to the reed islands. The floating islands were literally build ontop of the buoyant root mass of the reeds. The root mass was then over layed with fresh reeds about 1m long in a criss cross pattern about 60cm in depth. The final result was a floating island which people could build reed huts and live upon.

I stayed with a local family on Amantani island. The family were soo warm and generous. They had such a tight family unit, there were 3 generations all living and working in the same house. The family were farmers who primarily grew potatoes. They produced approximately 150 kg of various spuds / year, which was enough to feed the family and trade some for other items such as oil, fish, and other vegetables.

There were 3 of use solo tourists allocated to the family. Luckily one of the tourists, Clare could speak great Spanish so she was our interpreter. The grandmother only spoke ketchawan and no Spanish so it was manly charades with her to communicate. There were 2x boys aged maybe 12 and 10 and a lil girl aged 4. The lil girl wore traditional dress the whole time and was soo adorable. The tradition on the island is that girls wear brightly coloured clothing while the men dress quite plainly.

That evening the island put on a fiesta for the tourists and we all got dressed in traditional clothing and danced around like idiots being lead by the older woman from the community.

I wore a plain grey poncho which was quite heavy and warm, while Clare got dressed in a bright skirt, colourful top and wore a veil / shawl that the men make for their wives with quite colourful and detailed embroidery.

The family cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner for us on an open fire in the kitchen / eating hut. The mother did all the cooking and was the last to eat. The food was primarily vegetarian with lots of different  potatos in both soup and main form. The food was jummy and very healthy.

The next day we left the island and our home stay famalies quite early at 8am. From the amantani we visited another island which was notorious for having the best male knitters in the world. This is primarily as the male is required to make the brides dress, so the better a guy was at sewing the better chicka he could attract.

The boat ride home was slow and we eventually pulled into dock at 1730. I had a relatively quiet night, dinner with a few people from the tour, then an early night.

I would really recommend the link lake titicaca home stay, it was a fantastic experience.

Craig out.