Mexico, Central & South America > Peru > Southern Andes > Lake Titicaca > Articles > The Floating Islands of Lake Titicaca

As soon as they spy the visitors to their island a dozen children fling their small bodies at us and grabbing a hand each, drag the group back to their pre-school. There the teacher proudly shows us they can sing nursery rhymes in 10 languages. And finally, discreetly, asks for a donation.

This display must take place at least five times a day but they’re all as enthusiastic as if we are the first-ever tourists to the reed islands of Lake Titicaca. Which we’re not obviously. The islands are shockingly commercialized. In fact without tourists this way of life would probably have died out years ago.

Twenty-five years ago there were only five reed islands left. Now there are at least 20 even if a few inhabitants also have houses on the mainland and others live in the metal stilt houses behind the showpiece.

I suppose it’s one way of preserving a culture which has been around for centuries though the islander’s original language (Uros) was lost around 500 years ago when the Spanish arrived. Now most islanders speak either Aymara or Quechua as well as Spanish.

Though the region is known as the folkloric capital of Peru with festivals and traditional dances galore, the creation of these islands was prompted by distinctly anti-social tendencies. The people simply wanted to get away from warring neighbours and the Incas. Even now if there’s a family argument all the islanders have to do is cut the island in half. Odd then, that the 2000 people living on the 20 floating islands are visited by about 100 tourist boats a day.

There are other reasons to live here though apart from tourism and getting away from the Jones. Islanders pay no tax. And why would you when you’ve created your own world?

Sewage just goes back into the lake and every part of the reed is used for something. They’re woven, eaten (full of iodine), made into boats, houses, islands and toys.

The islands are made by tying together many layers of totora or reeds. They’re continually replenished form the top as the bottom part rots and the islands are anchored in place by sticks in the water. The lake contains about 29ha of these reeds.

Apart from shaking hands with tourists and trying to sell their colourful weaving and reed handicrafts, islanders spear fish, hunt birds with guns that look like World War 1 relics (they eat flamingo, heron, cormorant and duck), farm potatoes, beans and onions on the reeds and in the dry season they bring on animals such as cows, sheep and pigs from the mountains nearby.

Still, there are a few concessions to modernity. Building a reed boat from scratch used to take a month. Now it’s much faster since they use plastic bottles as a base.

Lake Titicaca is famously mysterious. Its name means stone puma and the guide shows us a picture taken from the air in 1973 in which the lake allegedly looks exactly like a stone puma. Mind you, it could just as easily be described as an exact likeness of the Virgin Mary or Bart Simpson but never mind.

Then we’re told about the giant toads discovered by Jacques Cousteau who live in the deepest part of the lake and measure half a metre across. Toads seem to me to be good metaphors for these people who live half on land and half on water.

It’s an unusual liminal world and typical of the region really. Lake Titicaca is so big (170km long and 60 km wide) and so high (3820m above sea level) that at this altitude the air is extraordinarily clear, thin and luminescent. Here nothing looks particularly anchored to the earth.

In many ways the lake has always been betwixt and between worlds. First as a border between the Aymara, Uros and Quechua people and now divided between Peru (which claims 60% of the lake) and Bolivia.

And then there are the reed islands – a sort of nowhere fantasy creation.

Articles

• More from Yvonne Van Dongen