Don´t tap the glass

The floating islands of the Uros people on Lake Titicaca are still inhabited today by the ancestors of the same people who created them to escape their more warlike neighbours, such as the Incas. Until as recently as just thirty years ago, they did not even understand the idea of currency, their way of life was so untouched. Nowadays, the islands that visitors see (only around 25% of them) are almost zoo like in the way tourists are shipped out to them to watch a few simple demonstrations of the way the villagers live, and then invited to "visit the gift shop" and to take a ride on the reed boats (virtually everything is constructed from the reeds on which they live).