An horrible experience - Puno Lake Titicaca tour

Today was a long day with not a lot of good. It’s because we used a very standard tour. Since online I couldn’t find any tours that was special, really recommended or qualitative to see the Uros community and lake Titicaca ( Peruvian side ), I just picked the one proposed by Peru hop when I booked the bus. 

What a mistake – it was such a bad tour. Honestly in hindsight – I was very much too critical of the hike on Isla del sol. (probably because I was suffering a bit from altitude and breathing like an asthmatic about to die for such a simple trail … ). 

If you have done Copacabana and Isla del Sol, just skip Puno. And if you are hesitating between the two: visit Isla Del Sol.

The tour included: visit of the Uros Community on the floating island, Amantani island and lunch at Llachon. It’s a full day tour. It costed something like 30 USD per pax. So definitely on the cheaper side of what we have seen.

Let’s dissect a little bit this useless day. Pick up was around 7 am and was on time, but they made us wait in the boat for more than an hour for others to join. We departed at 8:30 am. During our wait on the boat, we had an unsolicited musician come to play a few songs and then asked for a tip. I didn’t mind this too much, the guy had skills and it was worth the tip. But still, it’s unsolicited. 

The boat ride was about 1h30 to reach the Uros community we were going to visit. The good bit of this day, learning how they build their village made entirely of totora, the local lake bamboo, is interesting. This 30min of explanation about their culture and how to use Totota was good. 

But now, let’s talk about the bad – and how unauthentic this has become. The small floating island had 6 huts, and 20 villagers. When we arrived 20 tourists and their guide were already there and we were another 20… It’s like so intrusive the amount of foreigner there. The villagers are waiting for you with a lot of things to sell and crafts – each of the 6 families had a small stall with stuff on this overcrowded platform. The guide will let them “hardsell” them to you at the end of his talk. 

Then there is the small 20min on their totora canoe, which is not included in the price and cost PEN15 per person. The boatman will bring you to the closest totora patch and will provide more information about harvest, use of the plants etc… This was interesting and worth it. If you speak Spanish you can ask a lot of questions and learn quite a bit ( which we did ).

The bad of this boat ride ? The villagers push little kids – the ones that are really cute - to come onboard and sing then ask for small tip. It made me cringe. You can clearly see that the kids are forced and not enjoying doing this at all. And we felt exceptionally uncomfortable. 

I believe, the Uros communities have something unique to teach and share but the way tourism is done now makes it feel so unauthentic and cringe worthy that I would not recommend doing this tour at all.

And the Uros were the best part of this day…

So next, we are at about 11 am and we continue our boat ride to Amantani island, which is about 2h of boat. It’s long and by the time you arrive, you are pretty hungry.

Amantani island is not as nice as Isla Del Sol. First it has motorcycle – whereas in Bolivia the island has no real road per say, just walking dirt paths. Amantani is supposed to have 2 nice temples at the top that are Inca remains. But with this tour, you won’t see them. So what do we see of Amantani ? A quick walk through the village to an unimpressive main square and then walk back down to the port.

Why stopping there then you may ask ? It’s because in the tour, half the guests are sleeping one night in a homestay on the island. The tour agency, to save money just brings everyone there – and try to spin the Amantani stop for the full daytripper as something interesting… It’s not. It’s 2h more from Uros island of boat and it takes another 40min to Llachon. By this time, you are positively HANGRY. 

The stop in Llachon is a nice little restaurant with a view and the food is simple and alright. But we had lunch at 3pm. Why organize it this way – you ask tourist to wake up and have breakfast before 6 am and then feed them at 3pm ? That is so inconsiderate.

From Llachon, it’s 2h and a little more back to Puno. We arrived around 6pm-ish back to our hotel.

I didn’t mention the guides, who were not very knowledgeable except when we were on the Uros floating island. The rest of the day was just positively useless and a waste of time.

Once we were back in Puno, we further explored the nice city center. We went to buy some snacks for our night bus and decided to go back to the Japanese restaurant – because we had lunch so late, we were not that hungry. But we knew that during the night we would be starving. Since we knew the portions of the restaurant, we managed to order a small quantity that was enough to tally us over.

Pick up was early from Peru hop and while Alexis handled the luggage, I rushed to get us the good seats on the lower deck of the bus. One big criticism that I would make of Peru hop. Everyone pays the same price but the seats on the lower deck are proper VIP Cama seats while on the top floor they are also Cama but not as wide and plush. We noticed it on our bus from Copacabana to Puno. We were ready to secure ourselves the best seats for the night journey to Cusco.