28 October 2008 South of the Border - Down Peru Way Part V

South of the Border - Down Peru Way - Part V
October 28, 2008

I spent most of the day on June 25th traveling by luxury tour bus from Cusco to Puno.

Puno is a good sized town on the shores of Lake Titicaca at elevation 12,700 feet. It is known as the folklore capital of Peru. It is famous for its two weeklong festival "Fiesta de la Candelaria" where thousands of people wearing colorful costumes and masks compete in folk dancing competitions.

In June the days are dry, sunny, and the nights are cold - around 20F. Luckily I had my Canadian Gore-Tex jacket that although it appears to be nothing more than a heavy windbreaker is comfortable down to 15F (as long as the humidity is low).

Lake Titicaca is the largest fresh water navigable body of water in the world. It is on the border of Bolivia and Peru. I was fascinated by Lake Titicaca from the first time that I heard of it during my fourth year of grammar school back in Connecticut. Now I was going there!

The sky was brilliant blue and the bus traveled a well built road that followed along the banks of a fast flowing river. We traveled across an area known as the "Alto-Plano" (High Plains).

The Alto Plano has free ranging herds of alpacas and llamas. It is very sparsely populated. It was an area where the Shining Path Maoist guerrillas, Sendero Luminoso were active from the 1970's until 1997. Why - I have no idea! There are very few trees (At the risk of exaggerating I would say there are no trees on the Alto Plano). There are hardly any people and the ones that are there are extremely poor. They live in extremely small one room mud huts that are only about 6 feet tall. They raise cattle and sheep. There is no electricity. I don't think that I would last more than three days out there.

After a long journey, we arrived in Juliaca, Peru. OH MY GOD!! Juliaca was the worst place that I have ever seen, up to then and even as of today. It was worse than anything I saw in Algeria. It was absolutely frightening. My advice is to avoid it at all costs. There are 400,000 people living there in absolute squalor. According to the Tour Guide, and not reputed by anything that I saw, the city is full of thieves and has a thriving black market in stolen goods.

The streets are very narrow with row upon row of 1-1/2 story unfinished mud buildings.

Leaving them unfinished, essentially remaining perpetually under construction, delays the requirement to pay property taxes on them.

Unfortunately for me, after my stay in Puno I had to return to Juliaca to catch a flight back to Lima.

I arrived in Puno at 6:00 PM. After a great meal in a local restaurant that had a very welcomed wood burning oven in the corner, it was a welcomed time to sleep.

The next day was very sunny and was a great day. The Port of Puno is very polluted with algae and human turds. It definitely did not live up to my expectations of what Lake Titicaca would be like. I was on a small tour boat headed out for the day to visit the Floating Islands of Uros and Taquile Island. I stayed outside, sitting atop the passenger compartment roof, the entire trip out to the floating islands. It was very brisk and refreshing. I wanted the full experience of Lake Titicaca and did not want to be insulated by walls, windows, soft seats and heat.

Uros are floating reed islands. People live on the islands that they build by adding tortora reeds to them daily. Of course they had things to sell to tourists. I stayed atop the boat roof and got some good photos. Our boat ended up getting stuck in the reeds and mud. The local people had to come out and help extract our boat. I got a nice picture of the native women watching us getting pulled out of the mud. Every picture has a story to tell and that one certainly did. We traveled about two hours to Taquile Island.

Taquile Island is renowned for its weaving. It has been inhabited for over 10,000 years. There are about 1,200 people living there now - weaving and knitting alpaca wool. They use unusual and intricate designs in their work. The inhabitants are considered to be among the best weavers in the Andes mountains. To reach the heart of the island, you have to climb 525 steep stone steps up from the dock - there are also similar brutal steps to go down. Both are bad, but I prefer to go up rather than down. Perhaps it is the excitement of anticipation that makes the required effort more tolerable.

The island is semi-arid and it reminded me a great deal of pictures of Greece. Along the trail to the center of the island, we encountered herds of sheep. The local residents wear different clothing from what I had seen previously in Peru. The men wore very decorative and colorful belts, white shirts, and nice intricate colored hats (ski toque style). Women wore big multi-layered dark skirts and dark simple shawls. The women were constantly tending their babies or using drop spindles to produce thread.

Once we got to the heart of Taquile, we had a very nice lunch. I became a tourist and bought some textiles from the local commune shop. On the way to the departure dock, I shot a nice picture of two men standing in their doorway knitting. One man was wearing a knitted hat exactly like the one I had just purchased.

On our return trip to Puno we were joined by three Taquile women and one baby. It was very entertaining to watch them drop spin and care for the baby. Since it was winter, the sun set early. I sat on the roof to watch the sun set over Lake Titicaca - very spectacular and colorful but cold. As I was returning my thoughts were of someday returning to rent a boat and explore the other islands and distance shores that were not part of this tour.

There is always some other distant shore, hidden valley, new place, exotic culture or local people to be experienced. They cannot all be experienced in a lifetime but to the extent that we can, I believe, the richer we become.