I visited the beautiful Lake Titicaca from both the Peruvian and the Bolivian sides. From Puno, Peru, I took an excursion out to see the Uros floating islands.  While they are unique, these islands constructed out of reeds seem to have mostly devolved into platforms for little floating markets.  At least the one I visited seemed to be supported by the resident family selling touristy souvenirs and cloth weavings. All things that I'm sure they bought wholesale and are just reselling and providing us visitors a way to thank them for letting us tour their little island.  And I got the impression that's how most of the tours work, just to different little islands.  I guess you're kind of sunk if you aren't lucky enough to attract a tour boat to your island.  The traditional simple reed boats are also mostly a thing of the past -- they've been replaced by increasingly elaborate constructions (still made out of reeds, but covered in lacquer and paint).  It was still fun to take a short ride in one (the double hulled "cat" boat in the center of the photo here) while the little boy from the family serenaded us with simple folk songs in 4-5 different languages..

On the Bolivian side, I spent a few hours in the lakefront town of Copacabana.  Unfortunately, our Peru Hop bus was delayed for 4-5 hours by road construction, so I didn't get to do the Isla del Sol tour that I had scheduled.  Copacabana didn't seem particularly interesting and I had no desire to stay overnight there. I climbed the local Calvary hill for a nice overview of the lake and town.

 

The surprising large city of Puno was a great place to stay and provided the best evening of my trip. I was walking home to my hotel and happened across what appeared to be a pan flute flash mob.  4 big drums and a couple dozen musicians playing pan flutes of varying sizes were joined by about 50 young women repeating a simple rhythmic dance move, and more pan flute players and dancers joined in while I was watching. (My hotel clerk suggested it might have been a university group practicing -- in any case, it was just on a side street and clearly wasn't really trying to attract tourists.) After leaving that, I came across a youth cultural dance troupe vigorously practicing their routine on the plaza in front of the main cathedral.  In the thin air at 3800 meters, walking fast for a block made me winded; I couldn't imagine the extended effort they were putting into the dancing.