Lake Titicaca, Peru

Puno is a getaway to Lake Titicaca from the Peruvian side, and Lake Titicaca is apparently the world’s largest (8400 sq km) high-altitude lake (3808m). The town itself wasn't anything special and we didn't really explore it apart from evening stroll to the restaurant and two nights’ accommodation there. So the following morning we went on…A TOUR yaaay. What a joke! Hate bloody tours!!! But anyway since I watched a documentary on National Geo about Islas Flotanes (Floating Islands) on Lake Titicaca and Uros people that live there I had this naive imagination about the place and wanted to go there. We have heard from many people that islands are horribly commercialized, full of tourists and simply the whole organisation of visiting them is fake and very cliché. Some of the people go to the Island like going to work and they put on their traditional costumes to act in front of the tourists.  Knowing all this we still decided to do it. The good news was that the Island we’ve visited was actually habited by the local families but still the experience wasn't what I expected. Island was overloaded with tourists and surrounded by the tourist boats, there was way too many people for the size of the floating island. Nonetheless I sill appreciate it and I’m glad I saw it as it is a unique place. The islands are built using layers of some kind of plant that I can’t remember the name of and that grow on the lake. They have to change it now and again but I reckon with this amount of tourists visiting them they will have to do it even more often. 

Another Island we visited was Isla Taquile (7 sq km) which seems to be nicer but maybe because it was bigger and we didn’t see that many people there.