Llama backups aside, the drive to Lake Titicaca was quite nice – the highway driving is significantly less chaotic than city driving and we had the chance to stop and soak in the roadside attractions, including flamingos! Not exactly the fauna I was expecting to see at this elevation, but apparently Andean Flamingos are a thing…

We stayed at the GHL Hotel Lago Titicaca, a 5-star hotel on the lake itself (or at least a small, man-made island jutting off from Puno). It was definitely a dated hotel, but it’s still a 5-star resort – for $80 a night! The hotel has a nice walk around the little island it sits on and we enjoyed stretching our legs while soaking in the fact that we’re sleeping on the world’s highest elevation, navigable lake for the night. It also helped that the food and drinks at this hotel were fantastic, and we stuffed ourselves on some Pisco Sours, great quinoa dishes and I even tried my first alpaca steak.

The next full day on the lake we decided to do a boat tour, where we would visit the indigenous Uros people who live on floating reed islands in the middle of the lake. It was a really fascinating experience having our boat essentially dock in someone’s front yard and then hopping out to get introduced to the lovely family (only women and children, as the men are out fishing all day). We got to walk around the island home and had some of the typical tourist interactions (try my food, also buy this mass-manufactured item that I totally made by hand), but overall it was interesting seeing what is essentially a snapshot of the pre-Inka culture in the area – the floating islands were a final refuge for the people who resisted Inka conquest in the region and I can definitely appreciate why even the Inka warriors wouldn’t want to get in fights on crowded reeded islands…

The rest of the day was then spent boating over to a less-floaty island – Taquile Island – where a pretty significant population of around 3000 people still live and work on the island, mostly in the tourism industry. Despite being here in the rainy season, we were extremely lucky and had quite a sunny day on the island which was a gorgeous place to just wander around. We also saw some local dancing and weaving of the belts worn by all around the island – interestingly, the Taquile textile production method was a winner of a 2005 UNESCO competition for “Masterpieces of Humanity” and after seeing it in person, I can definitely see why they won!

A big shoutout to our guide Cesar who helped us and all the other tourists appreciate the history around Lake Titicaca in a whole new way!