"Marta, Marta comprame" (Marta, Marta buy)-a woman on a reet island tried to sell me all of her handmade treasures. Now I knew why she wanted to know my name when I entered the island....
Uros islands are floating reet islands with a very long tradition dating back to the Inca times (so they say). Nowadays there are few thousand people living on the tiny islands. Incredible construction and persistence to sell. The woman was running after me to try to make me buy her stuff thinking that I had one empty backpack for it and JD had a backpack full of money. To complete the circus to go to another island we needed to get on a cheesy reet boat "Made in China". At least there were actually people rowing it (I saw another one which was just pushed by a motor boat). And all of it tax free, Uros people don't have to pay taxes or have to buy a piece of the Lake that they use....
From Uros we went to see a traditional island called Amantani. Which had nothing special to offer but people for whom responding to "hola" was too difficult. We stayed there with a family who was pretending to speak Spanish responding every question I asked with an answer which was not even related. Obviously they tried to sell us their handmade hats and other shit right after dinner. In the evening they squeezed us into their traditional clothing (yep squeezed as I could barely breath) and took us for a party. It was so ridiculous that it ended up being fun.
On the next day the circus continued on the Taquile island which we saw in a documentary by the BBC. The chief of the village was saying that they work just like in Inca time, no money just community work and help for each other. Probably true because they have enough money from all the tourists that come to see this circus.
I wish I could say that Puno city was nice but it was quite ugly and definately without a soul.
At least we were not sad leaving it behind us to go to Cusco in hope the Inca capital would be a different world.