Lake Titicaca

I was at Lake Titicaca for a few days. I went on a boat tour of some of the islands. There is one tribe of indigenous people that live on floating reed islands which they construct themselves. They have done this historically to isolate themselves from outsiders. Intermarriage with outsiders is very rare. But today, they are very open to tourism.

It seems like tourism has spoiled a lot of the indegenous people here. Not just with the floating islanders, but also with the permanent islanders. Today, these groups have an economy that seems to be half subsistance farming/fishing and half tourism. I think tourism has really changed these places. A lot of the time, I felt like we we're getting a show of "what the tourists want to see". But, maybe not.

Our tour group was split up, and we each spent a night on the permanent island with a host family. At night, there was a party. Our families dressed us up in native clothing, and we all danced at the "town hall" with some live native music... That was weird to say the least.