Home on the water...

Puno's main draw for tourists is as a launch point for Lake Titicaca to visit the 40 floating villages scattered around the lake.

The floating villages are inhabited by the Uros tribe, who pre-date the Incan people. The Uros tribe originally lived on the mainland but moved to boats and then floating villages primarily as a defensive move to avoid being conquered by the Incans.

The tribe makes each floating village out of totora reeds, stabilized by cork-like mounds of soil which act as a base.  The soil is tied to the lake floor by other reeds to stop the village from moving.  As the reeds rot over time, fresh layers of reeds are added every two weeks.  Huts and boats are also built out of these reeds, and must be replaced with heavy frequency.

Each floating village generally supports between 3 and 10 families, although one village is said to house about 100 people.

Each village has one President, and the title is rotated among the families to ensure fairness.

A new village is sometimes created to maintain harmony if families suffer unresolvable differences. To do that, they literally cut a village in half and the two parts float away from each other.

The families live almost all aspects of daily life on these floating villages - sleeping, cooking, eating, washing etc.  In addition, many of the villages have recently installed solar panels to generate electricity and enable the use of lights, radios and televisions as well.  Now only schooling and trade require them to travel to the mainland.

It would certainly be a different and hard life to live on these floating villages.  But the tribe seems very content and has been very resourceful in creating ways - such as tourism - to ensure its continued survival and success.