build yourself an island

Written 02/23/2009

Twenty-seven blessed years ago today, my sweet mother brought me into this fine world. It's my birthday! We had a rough night. We both woke up a bunch of times feeling really dehydrated and I was also freezing and Matt kept waking up having a hard time breathing and thinking it would be a really crappy birthday present if he died and I had to figure out how to get him home.

Luckily, we survived the night and couldn't sleep much past 7:00 am. Though we have an incredible amount of medicine and enough band-aids to heal the world, we could not find anything for our headaches so we popped into our neighborhood farmacia. Apparently the “pharmacist” was sick too as he was in the back of the shop contemplating the effects of his medicinal marijuana. When he finally came out to greet us, he offered us pretty much every prescription drug known to man. We settled for some over-the-counter Naproxen for $2 and left him to his own devices.

We walked around town and saw some of the sites and then had an amazing “desayuno ameicano.” For a mere $3 we had cafe con leche, orange juice, scrambled eggs and bread with butter and jelly. Fantastico. Matt was still feeling pretty bad but was trying to solider through for my birthday so we came back for a bit so he could take a nap before we left for our tour of Isla Uros on Lake Titicaca this afternoon.

Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world and is shared by Peru and Bolivia. As out guide/friend Moises bragged “60% is Peru's and 40% is Bolivia's – so, we win.” Puno is jumping off point for Lake Titicaca adventures on the Peruvian side so this afternoon we planned a tour of Isla Uros which is an inhabited island that is made from reeds. Literally. That's what the tour brochure said “visit an island made of reeds.” Impossible. Not so my land-loving friends. We took a boat about 30 minutes off of the shoreline and docked at Isla Uros where six families live on their own private islands they made out of reeds. The ultimate craft project.

How do they do it you ask? They start with the root of the reed which forms the base of the island. We saw one. They look like blocks of mud. They tie them together with sticks and rope. Then they gather a crap-load of reeds and lay them on top criss-crossing them for more coverage. And if the island starts a-sinking they just add some more reeds on top. Don't worry about the houses, because they just lift those up and add more reeds underneath as well. The houses, boats, everything was made out of reeds. I took about 1 million pictures so you can see for yourselves. Also you will be excited to note that after beating myself up over not getting the picture behind the shield, I did go for broke and sit down on the “abuelo's” porch for a picture with him. I feel redeemed.

Back to the reeds. It felt like walking on a water bed. A little squishy but most definitely stable land. And if you thought that there was no way these reeds could get any better: we ate one. So if you get hungry and you're just too lazy to walk over to your reed house to get a snack, well you just pick up a piece of floor and start chowing down. Talk about some multi-tasking little suckers.
We had some time to talk to Moises and ask him some questions and the sum of their parts goes like this: The reed islands began in the 1600's when the Spaniards came and began burning and pillaging everything forcing the Peruvians to flee. They jumped in their boats and out in the middle of the lake they started building their own utopia. Today, there are about 50 islands like that of Uros. Typically there are six to 10 families living on each one and more being built constantly. They all have “taxis” or boats that they made out of reeds that they use to go back and forth to Puno with. The main industry is fishing and they catch fish to eat as well as to take into Puno to trade or sell. They also make a bit of money from tourism and hawking their wares to said tourists. They are a persistent people, these Peruvians. They want you to buy their stuff, and buy it now.

Moises told us that the old man was the abuelo (grandfather) of Uros, still kicking at age 105 (“at least”) and the other houses were his family members. Apparently, there is not as much incest as one might think because the gents head to Puno to pick up chicks, and I am sure it's well after they are madly in love do the guys tell them they have to move to a floating island made of reeds in the middle of the lake. I guess the East Coast wouldn't be THAT bad. (I kid. The door was wide open. I would have been a fool not to. And no, we are not moving.) Once a floating islander, always a floating islander.

Now sans luxuries such as bathrooms, garbage cans, running water and the fear that every time you cooked something you had a very good chance of burning the entire island down, they did have a few luxuries. Solar panels provided electricity to watch T.V. and listen to the radio and a 100 year old rifle used to kill birds when they were sick off eating fish for dinner. They have figured out over the years that anchoring the islands down is essential, lest a stiff breeze blow them out of their zip code. And losing your island would be devastating as it takes about one year and a few hundred boatloads of reeds to build a new one.

After wandering around, completely invading their homes and their privacy, we got to ride in one of their taxi's to a neighboring floating island. Our captain's name was Esmerelda and she has lived on Uros all her life. She and the breeze paddled us slowly but surely across the way to a neighboring island. She even sang us a little Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star as we floated along. The neighboring island was pretty much the same as Uros: more reeds, more families, more crafts to be sold, though this family did have a reed yacht that was pretty rocking. We finally got back on the non-reed boat and went back to Puno around 6:00. I have to say, it was one of the most interesting and unbelievable things I have seen in a long time and it just goes to show what you can do if you put your mind to something and have plenty of reeds to spare.

When we got back, we were both feeling a little iffy but wanted to have some birthday dinner. There was minimal to chose from that we could afford, so we had some soup and toast at Ricos Pan (Nice Bread) because their dessert selection looked stupendous. Unfortunately, we never made it to dessert as sickness was ensuing. We outsmarted the silly-stringers and took a back way home, packed up and got in bed early in order to catch our 7:00 bus to Bolivia in the morning.