Yesterday evening I arrived by train at around 18:00, the time when it starts to get dark, which happens very quickly. A cab I ordered picked me up at the station and took me to the “harbor”, which in this case means the end of a channel formed by reeds here on Lake Titicaca. From the cab, we had to walk a little to get to the boat. The cab driver explained that it has been a wonderful 10 degrees since dark, in winter it can be 0. During the day the temperature rises to around 16 degrees. The boat was an open bowl with a motor, in the background the mountains, over which a thunderstorm was visibly raging, and it was also dark by now. As a tourist, I was wrapped in blankets so that I wouldn’t get cold on the boat trip. Jilber, my host for two days, stalked us about 200 meters along the canal, which was obviously not deep, at some point the engine started and we headed towards the island. Of course we weren’t the only ones in the canal, some had light in the form of a flashlight, some had nothing like us. I was impressed at how well the “seeing” worked in this darkness. The trip only took 10 minutes and we reached the floating island. It is made of reeds and as a result (I didn’t realize until the first step) soft. With every step, your foot sinks about 5? 8? centimeters, a new experience for me.
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Jilber built the island three years ago, it is made from the local totora reed, many layers lie on top of each other, 1.50 meters thick, the lowest layer rots over time, new layers have to be added every few months in succession. The eagle owl population has been building these floating islands for several thousand years, primarily to protect themselves from enemy attacks. This reminds me a lot of Venice, which was also protected due to its unique location: the water was so shallow that the enemy could not reach the city with their deep ships.
The little houses that stand on it, in this case about 10 (3 for rent, a kitchen, a bathroom for the owners, a dining area for tourists, 1-2 bedrooms for the landlords and a storeroom (?) ) stand on a wooden grid, slightly elevated, so with further layers of reeds underneath. And these houses are mobile, because the reeds underneath them also need to be replenished, so the houses are moved to a different place, similar to our agriculture in three-field farming, where the soil can recover for a while.
Tonight I slept in a bed with 6 single blankets. During the night it turned out that 4 were enough. On to the weather: the weather here has daytime temperatures (a word so complicated that I memorized it in my geography class). The Peruvians say they have seasons, but they are not spread over a year, but over a day. At night, the temperatures drop to 10 degrees, as described above, in the morning it gets warmer, in the afternoon it’s summer (unfortunately not today) and the beginning of the evening is autumnal.
As there is no heating, it is also quite cold in the morning. Today the sun hardly shone, it was overcast, had black clouds and it rained here and there. I spent the whole day walking around in warm functional underwear and anything I could wear on top, including a rain jacket, which also keeps me warm.
The view out of the window this morning made up for it:
During the day, there were explanations about the island’s structure, including a fishing trip around the corner, a tourist demo, which was also made of reed in a historic boat that the eagle owls used and still use for fishing. On this trip, Jilber also pulled a reed out of the water and offered it to me to eat. But it was not tasty.
In the pictures below you can see wonderfully different skies, they are only a short distance apart.
The visit to this small island (approx. 10 x 15 meters) was very relaxing and a nice break between Cusco and La Paz, where we are going tomorrow, but unfortunately the traces of tourism are also clearly visible. As is so often the case, tourism has good and less good sides.
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