Design Observation Blog - Floating Islands

Our arrival to Reed Island (not the real name, I think it was Puma Island...) 

I don't know if it's cheating since I took this photo before the class, but it's kind of awesome, so this will be a bonus travel recall design blog. In Lake Titicaca there are the floating islands of Uros, man-made islands created out of reeds that float! This sounded bizarre to me so I went on a day boat tour of the islands with Taylor and Diana which was both interesting and rather uncomfortable. On the island they explained the construction of the islands which, to the best of my recollection, is as follows: They use totora reeds that grow in shallow water and have root systems which spread and hold the earth together. They cut the reeds off and then cut large chunks of the earth out which are non dense enough that they float. The floating pieces are tied together and reeds are piled on top and then reed houses are created. And until the introduction of motor boats they made reeds to travel from island to island, of course out of reeds too. Now the reed boats mostly carry tourists on short journeys to get to from one tourist trap island to the next. And the reeds are edible as well, but its not the most appealing flavor. But cool right? one plant that you can eat, make boats and houses and islands.

Positives of reed islands: they are so nice and soft that they don't wear shoes on them, you can float away from annoying neighbors, if you get hungry there is potentially food everywhere. negatives: the islands are small and have a lot of tourist traffic, but maybe you're into that. But in all seriousness, the islands may not be luxury, but use of material intrigued me. How many materials are in my house right now? I'm guessing probably none that I can eat.

oh yeah I mentioned something about awkward. well it seems like the tourist destination uros islands aren't exactly like the ones that people actually live on. From a distance we could see electric lights and solar panels and motor boats on other islands. The houses we could look into appeared completely empty in most cases which makes me skeptical that people live on these islands at all. The people there make a hard sell for their souvenirs, which fair enough, they need to make a living, but the amount of time dedicated to letting us "look around" a tiny island was clearly so that they adequate time to chase us down to try and sell mini boats. And I get it, people change society changes, not everyone is going to want to live on small reed islands, but there is something kinda sad about the recreation of traditional lifestyles for the benefit of tourists, it shouldn't be Disneyland. Overall, a place that was fun to visit, but I'll skip it next time.