Visiting Lake Titicaca

To get out on Lake Titicaca and visit the floating reed islands, you will need to buy your tickets from a travel agency. You can find a number of them, around the Plaza de Armas, or by going down to the wharf and buying there as well. Now you will be presented with two different options when you go out on the lake: you can just spend the day touring the reed islands and buying and trading with the locals, or you can spend a night on either Amantani or Taquile island (not reed islands). If you choose to spend a night out on the lake, you will stay with a local family who will house and feed you. More on this later.

On the reed islands, one thing that may stand out to you is that many of the huts will have solar panels for electricity. We found this funny and ingenious at the same time, afterall, you are on a floating island in the middle of Lake Titicaca in a third world country! Your guide on the boat ride should be knowledgeable enough to tell you the history of the islands, but one thing that some will not tell you is this: don't trade or give candy to the children on the island. It is expensive for the islanders to go onto the mainland and get dental treatment and many of them don't make enough money to afford it anyways, so giving sugar to the children is not a "kind" gesture, but rather cruel. The natives who live on these reed islands, actually do eat, sleep, and work on the islands. They mostly subsist off the reeds and fish, and the money they earn comes from tourists and mainlanders who buy their fish. Lake Titicaca has a number of reed islands and your guide will explain to you that these islands all depend on each other for survival. They have schools, a clinic and even a church on the group of islands. The islands are all man made. The people start with a dense growth of reeds, then start piling bundled reeds on top of each other to form a circle, then they replenish reeds repeatedly every 2 and a half weeks. Most islands have about 2 and a half meters worth (8 ft.) of reeds piled up. Because these reed islands float, sometimes large rocks are dropped into the water and attached to ropes and these ropes in turn are used to anchor the island down.

As mentioned above, we suggest that if your children don't like boat travel, or get seasick, then you should not go to Amantani or Taquile island. We noticed, as we traveled to the islands, that a majority of the people who stayed overnight, were older people or couples. I think the reason for this is that, children really won't get much out of staying on an island and roughing it with a local family. The rooms are small and the food is very authentic, so if your children have had any difficulty with Peruvian food up to this point, they will not enjoy it. We thought, that most children would be more happy to tour the reed islands, which are really fun and highly recommended.

All in all, a visit to Lake Titicaca is fun only if you plan to see the reed islands. The town of Puno is very run down and not a very "touristy" town. If you live near or have been around lakes before, Lake Titicaca isn't anything too special, other than it's significance as the world's highest navigable lake.