row boats in lake titicaca peru

[jetman]

I just got back from Peru.while ther at lake titicaca I saw some really nice row boats but did not get a chance to ask about where they were built.Would anyone know about these boats?I would like to build one.

[Bill Lowe]

Photo?

[Thorne]

http://www.friendsofthepetalumariver.org/wp-content/uploads/fall09_13.jpg ??

[wtarzia]

My "Aak to Zumbra" book says they are called 'balsas', and I assume they were built locally, or perhaps a few villages away where perhaps the abundance of reeds allowed some small specialization in boating making and 'exporting'. They used to bind the bundles of reeds with a grass rope -- but did the bindings look synthetic at all? usually paddled, not rowed, sometimes sailed, and sometimes lashed two together to carry especially heavy loads.

These reed boats are interesting. The big problem is keeping the reeds dry and bouyant. I assume this works best in that dry high altitude? But here is a boat that is the very soul of sustainability -- you "grow" a new one on the shore near your home! And no fumes from either construction or use! (Now, I wonder if burn them at the end of their useful life? I would rather hope that they used them for field fertilzer. In Ireland, a thatched roof of reeds like this would last 2 to 5 years, at the end of which, yes, the roof was removed and used as ferilizer.). In fact, on some Irish lakes they also used reed boats, held together in wooden frames.

Anecdotal aside: I don't think I ever posted here a photo of the 'padua' used in Ghana, taken by my girlfriend when she traveled there a couple of years ago. (too much trouble to post photos on this site so I never bothered after my first few times). The padua is a square sectioned, long wide beam (about 10-15 feet long, about 15 inches wide) with an upward bevel at the ends, roughly cut by chainsaw I think. Used on a large lake. The fishermen sit on them like a sit-on-top kayak, paddling with hands or hand-paddles (perhaps just a slab of wood) and tend their fish traps. They raise them over the water on pilings to keep them dry. True, such a craft cannot go fast, but the lake is so over-fished now, in a way I think the craft limits the fish-take and is thus a kind of adaptation, conscious or not, to the depleted fishery (as if we suddenly outlawed fish-finder gear and diesel motors and such, went back to sails and other simpler fishing methods, to let the fishery be restored, ala Chesapeake bay? Just a thought.) -- Wade