On-the-Road Tales

Yet another early rise, some vacation this is….left Cusco for the Eastern City of Puno. Took a tour bus which made 6 stops along the way to various markets and musuems, including a high altitude stop of 4200 meters! I think the scenery on the first valley outside of Cusco was the most amazing I have seen so far. As we rolled along, it did not disappoint. I was struck how the countryside reminds me of what Ireland must have been like 70 years ago. The hills are green and the fields tilled and planted with all sorts of crops. The houses are made of adobe, cut form nearby fields and stacked like turf. The roofs are Andean grass, so they appear just like thatched rooves. The men are out cutting the corn with scythes and the women are shepherding groups of sheep, cows, donkeys, alpacas or a combination of all! far from the homesteads all in traditional dress. The only difference is 21st century modern life exists and rolls past them less than a mile away in buses outfitted with video equipment and bathrooms which there houses do not even have. It is like a step back in time.

We visited a preInca museum in Pukura and I was struck by the zoomorphic stone carvings and their similarities to the ones I have seen in Ireland. Zoomed by the Intl airport in Juliaca, it was nice to see an ATC tower again and a B737. We arrived at our final destination around 1730. I found a hostal and I was prepared for the cold temperatures I was warned about up here near Lake Titicaca. What I was not prepared for was the hail, and fork lightening storm that ensued as soon as I was too far form my hostal to grab a rain jacket. All hell broke loose and it was impossible to shelter in a cubby as the wind kept changing direction and depositing chunks of ice on my jumper. The people were running arounds the streets (aka now full running rivers of rainwater) laughing. I could help but think that if this was happening in NY or DC, the folks would not be smiling. I had to crack up bc the scene was mayhem and struck up a friendship with another refugee who assured my this was an isolated occurence! yeah. I still have to make it back to the hostal so I am not assured yet because I can still hear it lashing out. Off to some remote island tomorrow and since they have no electricity, updates are out of the question for a bit…signing off…

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.