Miss Maps Goes Solo

Sorry, two updates this time so please read below first!

I planned this trip so loosely that all I knew I wanted to do in Peru/Bolivia was Lake Titicaca. It´s the highest navigable lake in the world at 3800m. The lake spans the Peru and Bolivia border so we started on the Peruvian side. We visited as part of a tour that would include an overnight stay with a family, all very touristy but very cool.

As well as regular islands, there are 38 floating islands, created in pre-Inca times, they´re made of reeds, piled 3 metres deep and as the reeds at the bottom rot away they pile more on top. It feels really squishy to walk on. The people fish trout and catfish from the lake and trade them on the mainland. I don´t think their lives have changed much over the last few hundred years.

It took 4 hours on the boat to reach the natural island of Amantani. I spent the whole time lying down in the boat, the altitude was making me feel seriously nauseous. On the island we were assigned a family for the 3 of us, this was the closest I´d been to really traditional Peruvian life. The house was a few rooms off a muddy courtyard with a seperate kitchen in a mud hut, a non-flushing toilet also in a mud hut and a few sheep milling around. The matresses were made of something crunchy and underneath them was a layer of reeds. There was no shower, no running water and no electricity. From what we could tell 3 generations lived in the house and the girls all wore the traditional brightly coloured full skirt, white embroidered blouse and long black embroidered scarf worn over the head. Lunch consisted of soup followed by potatoes, a fried egg and tomato, washed down with coca tea. Potato is a big part of the diet here, they grow black, purple and yellow ones.

After lunch we climbed a further 650m (can´t believe I hit 4100m) to the summit of the island for a fiesta celebrating mother earth. This only happens once a year so we were pretty lucky although our altitude was so bad that we took forever to climb and missed most of it. Still we saw one community dancing along the top of the mountain waving flags and playing flutes, all very Andean. Our tour guide had abandoned us and we ended up being shown around by the 7 year old son of our host mum. Although we missed the main fiesta we had a fantastic walk back down the house.

Dinner was the same soup followed by rice and potates washed down with coca tea. We were starting to struggle with the stodge. Then things got really weird, Libia (our host mum) brought us all traditional clothes to wear up to the community hall for a spot of dancing. It was pretty cool getting dressed up and trekking up the terraced fields in the dark (I had a torch this time, see previous entry). Dancing felt like being at a school disco in a village hall. 3 guys played traditional Andean music while the locals pulled us up to swirl our skirts around in a really monotonous but quite fun traditional dance. It was really touristy, they do it every night and you could tell the locals were a bit over it.

When we got home we could hear a grown man balling his eyes out. Libia´s dad, who danced in the fiesta, had a few too many beers and had to be carried back to the house and put to bed. I must admit it seemed like the whole community was pretty drunk.

The next morning (after sleeping in all my clothes under 4 alpaka blankets) breakfast was some kind of deep-fried batter, pure fat. This time we resorted to taking some with us so as not to offend. We headed to another island called Taquile, a smaller and even more traditional place. Here the men knit their own hats (like bobble hats with bits that cover your ears and pom poms hanging off two bits of string). Single men wear a certain type shaped like a cone. The top, floppy bit is bent over to the right if they don´t have a girlfriend and to the left if they do. If they´re not looking they flop it backwards (the little boys wear it this way too). The married men wear a different type of hat which they make themselves. It takes them 1 month to knit and it looks like really intricate embroidery. The married guys also knit a bag for coca leaves and they greet each other by exchanging leaves rather than shaking hands.

Lake Titicaca was everything I hoped and we still have the Bolivian side to see. We´re all pretty nervous aobut Bolivia, it´s the least touristy country and famous for food poisoning and altitude sickness, something we´ve all had enough of. We head there in a day or two.

As for my mental state, I still feel like coming home, I´m pretty exhausted and the hardest bit is yet to come. One month in Bolivia will be tough. Just the idea of carnival is wearing me out! I´m kind of craving the Heathrow arrivals lounge now that I´ve got less than two months to go. I feel like I just want to spend the next 7 weeks in somewhere like Buenos Aires learning tango and having a nice time. I think after people have been travelling for a while they need to stop somewhere for a bit. Maybe we´ll find somewhere in Bolivia to do that. If not, I can always change my plans and go somewhere more developed to sit tight for a while, who knows.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2006 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Peru. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.