We had a seven-hour bus ride from Chivay to Puno, which included a stop to view Andean flamingos at Lagunillas and an attention-getting thunderstorm which we viewed from our front-row seats.

Puno, a city of about 145,000 residents, is definitely a tourist town with many restaurants and places to stay. Situated at the west shore of Lake Titicaca, it is a common starting point for lake adventures and includes a peaceful boardwalk with many benches for watching boats, people, and birds. 

As with many other cities in Peru, we enjoyed sitting in the main plaza watching as children and adults walked past, stopped at the center statue, or chatted with their friends while sitting on one of the surrounding benches. The plaza originally included a fountain but that was changed in 1925 to a monument of Colonel Francisco Bolognesi, hero of the war with Chile.

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Since the judicial building for the city is on one side of the plaza, this was busy place with people crossing the plaza while going to and from court appointments or folks waiting on plaza benches for their attorney’s report at the end of a day in court.  

By volume of water and surface area, Lake Titicaca is the largest lake in South America and is the highest navigable lake in the world with an elevation of 3, 810 meters. It has the shape of a puma hunting a rabbit, which is recognizable without too much imagination. The approximate center of the lake serves as part of the border between Peru and Bolivia. According to Andean belief, the lake is the birthplace of the sun. 

Uros Floating Islands, the most commonly photographed part of Lake Titicaca, are just a 20-minute boat ride from Puno. The area is a group of more than 90 small floating islands and once served as a refuge from the expanding Inca Empire.

Each island, made from totora reeds, is about 3 meters thick, including one meter of clumps of reed roots for the base. An island takes about two years to build and lasts about 30 years. Over time the layers of reeds get soggy and start to sink.

About 300 families live on the 90 islands and each island annually elects its own president. Several boats function as floating markets so island residents can buy fresh fruits and vegetables or other foods daily if needed.

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Taquile is one of larger islands in Lake Titicaca and has a population of approximately 2,200 people. Life on the island is peaceful. Mules and walking are the ways of getting around the island. Cars and bikes are not allowed and no police station exists on Taquile. 

Traditional clothing styles and colors are important to residents of the island. Men wear black pants and white shirts with colorful belts. A man’s red hat means that he is married. A single man wears a white and red 

Married women wear black skirts and red sweaters. A single lady has a colorful skirt and shirt. At about age 15 girls starts wearing black shawls on their heads and continue this habit even after they are married. The size and colorfulness of the pompoms at the corners of black shawl indicate marital status. Large and colorful pompoms are supposed to attract a young man’s attention and therefore mean she is single.

Males do the knitting for the family and wives and daughters do the weaving. Young boys are taught how to knit and encouraged to knit whenever possible, even when walking. In order to attract a wife a teenage boy needs to be able to knit with tight stitches. 

Every year a wife weaves half of a colorful belt for her husband that includes a patterned or picture calendar. The husband weaves the other less colorful half of the belt using some of his wife’s hair. The belt wraps around the man’s waist several times with the wife’s colorful half visible. Men carry a woven satchel on their waist to hold cocoa leaves.  The daily greeting between men is to trade coca leaves from their satchels rather than shaking hands.

The Taquile economy is mostly based on tourism, such as the sale of fine alpaca textiles. Members of the families of Taquile view the creation of textiles as an honor and responsibility.  Every week each family gives 10 woven or knitted items to the community textile shop in the plaza to be sold to tourists. At the end of the week 10% of the revenue from sold items is given to island province (tax) and the other 90% is for the family.