These days, powered boats to Taquile takes four hours. Tourism is huge now compared to the old days. But there is still an innocence about this island, which has no hotels or roads. On a recent return visit to the island there last year, I sleep in the same mud hut I slept in 20 years ago. No running water.
Water is from the roof or fetched from the lake.
I sleep on a bed of reeds and sheep wool blankets. There are bed bugs and children crying below. Isla Taquile is doing good by Peruvian standards, but the Huatta family is not. They live in a basic Third World way. We go to the bathroom in the fields around the house.