Lake Titicaca. It turns out, not only good because it's got 'tit' in the name.

In order to visit the floating islands of Lake Titicaca it's necessary to have the Peruvian town of Puno as one's base. Puno is ostensibly a shit hole and would more accurately be named simply poo. Or Pooyes. Only a short boat ride from the port of this inauspicious place, and via the hectic, technicolour rickshaw-whirlwind and potholed streets, can be found the reed island communities of Titicaca. A man we encountered in Cuzco from Orlando, Florida, dismissed this experience as 'a pile of crap, to be honest'. Never trust a man whose home town is famous for Disney Land and raisinny OAPs. I think he didn't like it because none of the islanders had Mickey Mouse ears on. The day was overcast and quite grey but Lake Titicaca took on an almost gunmetal hue and was all the more dramatic for the ominous tempest clouds brewing overhead. The islands themselves are truly remarkable. Built from partially edible reeds and heavily layered with many a bamboo-like strand, the ground has a spongey, springy texture. You can feel and see yourself bobbing atop the lake, like being on a man made raft from a shipwreck story. Populated by extremely rotund (and no doubt buoyant) men and women in the vivid traditional Peruvian attire, the islands are like something you might see in a National Geographic magazine. You don't really believe that people can look and live like this in the 21st century but apparently it's real. The residents make their money from flogging intricately woven folklore vignettes in dazzling colours. Everything else is made from reeds. The ground, the huts, the wicker-effect oriental looking boats with serpent heads. Very beautiful it all is too.

The women of the islands are particularly striking with their brown, round faces, giant toothy smiles, electric coloured skirts, cardigans and dark bowler hats. They all have their hair fashioned in two extremely long plaits, of the old school peasant style. In brief, the whole thing is a visual spectacular, a treat for the senses. The boat ride back to Puno was as dark as the very night and a bit of a debacle. About twenty minutes in we heard a woman from a nearby little fishing boat shrieking at otherworldly pitches 'Mi bebe!' Mi bebe!' It went on for a lot longer than that but frankly there isn't enough room on this post for the whole harrowing, repetitive dialogue. The woman and her small child had somehow fallen overboard into the lake. From our unlit vessel we saw the baby being dragged out of the water. The rescue had escaped the mother who was completely beside herself and hysterical, screaming the same mantra over and over, fainting intermittently and then resuming her gut-wrenching cacophany. Our boat stopped to help as someone from the little fishing boat called for alcohol to calm the wretched woman down. The man on our boat dashed and pulled a bottle of whiskey out of nowhere, craftily secreted in the vessel's depths. Despite the booze, it took a while for the frantic lady to be treated back to a relatively lucid state, by which time, what with all the kerfuffle, our own boat had become completely entrenched in the reeds at the bank of the lake. In order to exit the pickle all the passengers had to go and stand at the back of the boat, so that we could be pushed out of the wilderness. What a drama it all was, but I still preferred the floating islands to Disneyville. I know, crazy, right?