Floating around on the 'titty-poopoo lake': 23rd - 25th March

The next stop on the gringo trail after Cuzco is Lake Titicaca, a huge mass of water at 3400m and the largest high-altitude lake in the world. All well and good, but my German girlfriend and I were more excited by the prospect of visiting somewhere whose name translates as 'lake titty-poopoo' in German. Each to their own.

We had had many problems in Cuzco with finding a bus company willing to take us on the Sunday due to a miner's strike bang on the intersection of three roads between Cuzco and Puno on the banks of the lake. We finally found a company unscrupulous enough to take us an 'alternative route' which required us to get out of the bus at one point and walk a few hundred metres whilst it took an offroad route across a field. Another hour or so along a dirt track and we were back on the road and made it to Puno only three hours late (not bad even in normal circumstances).

The trip the next day was to the Islas Uros, a group of floating islands on the lake constructed entirely of the totora reeds that grow there. On these islands lives a centuries-old indigenous race, that survived the Inca invasion by moving onto the lake, which the Incas could not bring themselves to set foot on due to water being sacred in their beliefs.

It is therefore a shame that all that history and fight to survive should be undermined by the floating islands and their proud residents being whored out to tourists as it is. We took a boat into the community and landed on one of the islands whose day it was to receive visitors. Each small island has no more than 20 people living on it in five small hatched houses, presumably for fear of falling through the reeds. We were meet with an indigenous greeting that we had been taught, sat down for a short demonstration of how the islands are constructed, ate some reeds (tastes a bit like celery) and then the local women came and performed for us.

I say 'performed' because it did feel very forced. They sang three songs - a local song, a Spanish song all about reaching out to people from all around the world, and then bizarrely 'My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean'. We visited their humble living quarters (although it turns out you can still get satellite TV on a floating reed islands) and tried on their clothes, before leaving on a reed boat to another island, seen off with a choreographed 'hasta la vista, baby' routine from the local folk.

Once the tour company was satisfied that we had bought enough drinks and postcards from the next island, we headed back to the mainland for our bus to Bolivia with a slightly nasty aftertaste in our mouths from that fun but exploitative experience.

Border formalities were done with relative ease (it's great to be British and not need to pay for a visa for any of these places - unlike Americans who get hit with the petty 'reciprocation fee' wherever they go), and we arrived in the town of Copacabana to a lakeside double room for $4 each organised by our bus company and a wild party on the shore with old ladies off their faces and drinking from the bottle at 7pm on a Monday evening. Welcome to Bolivia indeed.

One thing we noticed quite early about Bolivia is that people are much more upfront about ripping off gringos than merely switching your bus to a different and far cheaper company at the last minute without refunding the price, as happened in Peru. Firstly the old bloke on the hotel reception tried to add 50% to the price of the room, before accepting the original price with a cheeky wink, and then we had a child asking for money after I took a photo of a llama on the Isla del Sol. A sign of a poor folk doing what they can to earn a little more money I guess.

The isla itself was lovely - a small car-free island on the Lake Titicaca with little traditional farms clinging to the hillside, archaeological sites and great views from the top. By the time we'd slogged it up there (the altitude again played a big role) it was just about time to swig a final glass of Inca Cola (a florescent fizzy drink we'd got addicted to in Peru) to catch the boat back and ultimately the three hour bus to La Paz at 7pm.