Taquile is a beautiful island on Lake Titicaca and its residents have a very interesting culture. While Taquile is about 2 hours from Puno by boat and 1-2 hours from the Uros floating islands (depending on where they are), its culture couldn't be any more different. Here are a few examples:

Weddings:
In typical Peruvian culture, weddings are festive celebrations that last 3 days. Not unlike our weddings, the bride & groom are the center of attention and everyone parties in their honor. In Taquile, weddings last 8 days. Sounds awesome right? I wish my wedding lasted a full week! Well it's not so fun for the bride & groom. They must spend 3 days kneeling in meditation, not allowed to move while the rest of the village enjoys the festivities. Their parents sacrifice a sheep in their honor and give them the sheep's skin to kneel on. You'd think it's a kind gesture but it turns out to be the worst part.  The sheep skin is not cleaned so the tics crawl on to the couple's skin and bite them. They must endure this the entire 3 days without moving! 

The women here have beautiful shiny long black hair. However, when they get married they must cut it all off and use the hair to make a belt for their future husband. They mix their hair with alpaca hair and make a really beautiful belt that the husband wears for the rest of his life. The belt is very thick and sturdy and  is worn like a girdle so it supports his lower back. They also say it helps the kidneys and prostate so in essence the bride is making a belt to protect the health of her future husband. 

The couple must live together for 2 years before marriage to make sure they are choosing the right partner. It also gives them time to save up for the 8 day wedding because the bride and groom must pay for everything themselves. 

Women here wear about 30-40 skirts at one time. Most of them are really colorful but the top layer is always black (unlike the Uru people that wear such bright colors they look like traffic lights!). At a wedding, the bride and everyone in the wedding party wears all black. 

Clothing:
They say the clothes you wear make a statement about who you are.  That is definitely the case in Taquile! 

Hats: Everyone wears knitted hats. If your hat is red it means you are married. If it is red & white you are not married. If you wear a black hat, it means you are leader in the community. 

Pom-Poms: When the village has parties, women wear black head scarves with colorful pom-poms. They cover their entire face except for one eye. So how do you know who is who? You know by their pom-poms. Married women wear smaller pom-poms and single women looking for a husband wear one giant colorful pom-pom. 

Bags: Everyone in the village wears colorful knitted bags to hold their coca leaves. On an average day they just have one bag. However for big festivals, the men wear all their bags. The more bags a man wears, the more impressive he is to his fellow villagers. For example, if a man wears 30-40 bags, the villagers will say that his wife must work really hard to afford him so many bags. However if he only has10 bags, the villagers will say that his wife must be lazy. Notice that it's always the wife who does the work!

Knitting Men:
The island of Taquile is known for its knitwear. The men of the island do all the knitting - mainly belts, bags, sweaters and hats. They don't export them, although they do sell them to tourists that visit the island. Instead, they give them to each other as gifts. 

Alcatraz of Lake Titicaca:
Taquile was once the location of a prison for political prisoners. The government chose Taquile because  it was a secluded island making it difficult for prisoners to escape. One of Peru's presidents Luis Migues Sanchez Cerro was confined here before he became president (he was later assassinated). 

Our experience here was great. At first it was difficult because you have to hike up the hill to get to the main plaza. Normally this wouldn't bother me but the altitude made it difficult to move uphill at a reasonable pace.  At one point an elderly local man in beat up sandals carrying a huge load on his back zoomed by me.  Once we reached the plaza we had an amazing view of the lake & island! We then ate some lunch - quinoa soup and trout.  After lunch we hiked down the other side of the island which was a beautiful walk overlooking the lake. 

We took a full day trip on a boat on Lake Titicaca, visiting two fascinating islands one of which is called  Uros Floating Islands .

The Uros Islands are entire villages made of reeds that float around the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. Everything is made from reeds - houses, boats, kitchens, towers, schools, churches. They even eat the fresh reeds which have the consistency of an apple (and are very good for your teeth). It's truly amazing! 

These days they use some modern products like nylon rope to tie the reeds together and empty plastic bottles to use as pontoons for their boats. But pretty much everything else comes from the lake.  Each family creates their own floating island by tying together the roots of the reeds and then piling dried reeds on top of the roots to create a floor.  They have to refresh the reeds twice a month as they start to get wet and rot. They anchor their island so they don't float over to the Bolivian side of the lake and so they can stick together in a community. A floating reed island could last as long as thirty years. When the island starts to rot for good, they build a new one and send the old one off to compost.  

They get everywhere by boat - either a simple canoe made of reeds called a balsas, a typical rowboat, or sometimes a speed boat.  They also build fancy balsas with dragon heads for tours of the lake. They call these boats their version of the Mercedes Benz:)

Since they drink the water from the lake around their home, they don't have bathrooms on their floating islands, otherwise they'd contaminate the drinking water.  When they have to use the bathroom, they must take a boat to the other side of the lake, about twenty minutes of rowing.  

They also use the boats to go on dates. Since there isn't much common space or privacy on the islands the boyfriend will pick up his girlfriend in a reed boat and they will picnic together on the lake. 

We flew from Lima to Juliaca, an industrial town about an hour away from Lake Titicaca. Upon first glance of Juiliaca I thought the town was abandoned because all the buildings were incomplete. Floors, walls, windows and roofs were missing from most homes, and all the roofs had several feet of rebar sticking up out of the concrete columns, as if they had been planning to build another level.  We later found out that the government charges more taxes for completed homes & buildings than for incomplete homes & buildings. Therefore, no one finishes construction in order to pay lower taxes. 

We took a bus to Puno, Peru which is the largest city on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. Like Juliaca, Puno is not an attractive town, but its saving grace is the lake.  We stayed about 15 minutes outside of town.  The area had a nice view of the lake, was much quieter and less polluted. 

Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world at 12,500 feet above sea level.  I've never been this high above sea level so I was having a really hard time adjusting to the altitude. Chris felt fine but I suffered from a headache, shortness of breath and lack of energy for about a half day.  We later discovered that 1 in 4 people suffer from altitude sickness and based on what I read, I had a pretty mild case.   The people native to the Andes generally don't suffer because they are built a little differently. They have really large lungs, especially in relation to their bodies, so they can take in more oxygen than the rest of us.  

They also drink mate de coca, or a tea made of coca leaves, which helps alleviate symptoms of altitude sickness. I tried the tea but only drank a few sips, as I did not enjoy the earthy taste.   In addition to the headache and shortness of breath, the high altitude made me really sleepy. I napped during the day and fell asleep by 8pm in the evening. This worked out well since we had to be up really early in the morning to catch a boat out on the lake (more on this later).

Puno had interesting menu options including:

Frog Juice - This was by far the grossest food I've seen in Peru. The customer selects 2-3 frogs from an aquarium and they are thrown into a blender alive with a bunch of other ingredients. It's called Jugo de Rana and it's very popular with the locals. They say it gives you energy. 

Guinea Pig - There were 3 cages of cute guinea pigs outside of our hotel. I thought to myself - How cute! They have little pets. Not so much. People in the Andes love to eat guinea pig. You often see signs outside of restaurants with pictures of guinea pigs roasted on a spit. Sometimes the signs even feature a nice picture of a live guinea pig smiling at you.  They call the dish  Cuy. 

Alpaca - The alpaca is not just used for their wool, but also for their meat. A popular appetizer here is Alpaca carpaccio.  It is supposedly very healthy relative to other red meats.

Quinoa - It's in everything. They eat it with milk for breakfast, in a soup for lunch (really good!) and we even had shrimp encrusted in Quinoa for dinner. 

Potatoes - They have every kind of potato imaginable here. They say that the cultivated potato originated in the Andes mountains several thousand years BC. When the Spanish conquered the region, they brought potatoes back to Europe and introduced them to the rest of the world. 

Tons of Chicharones (fried Pig Skins) - We went to the central market to see what kind of food they sold. There was an entire sections dedicated to Chicharones.  5 foot BAGS full of them. 

Hey Mrs. Barbier's Class 2A! We have two questions for you:  1) What do you think Titicaca means? Hint: look at the shape of the lake here. Does it resemble an animal?  2)Would you try frog juice?