Nothing’s Familiar

After our 5 hour journey from Arequipa, with the delights of watching “Maid in Manhattan” dubbed in Spanish with English subtitles, passing fields full of Llamas, sheep, deer and other four-legged-money-making-animals we arrived safely in Puno; the land of high altitude (3860m), cocaine leaves, rain and the home of the worlds highest navigable lake, Lake Titicaca.

It should also be famous for making people leave things, Jurgen left his coat on the bus, to which on return it we discovered it had been stolen. Then we went to get some money out of the ATMs, I entered my pin-number, whilst being very secretive of my finger movements, withdrew the equivalent of 34 pounds, carefully placed the money into my wallet, then walked downstairs to the bank to change my newly acquired money into smaller notes. (No where in Peru seems to accept notes larger than 50 soles, 7 pounds) Money changed, bonus!

All of a sudden a police man pulled me to one side and handed me my receipt which I left in the machine, he muttered something else in Spanish, probably to the effect of “you stupid fool showing people how much money you have” which, I suppose if he had muttered that it would have been a fair mutter. “Si Si, Gracias” I thanked him for his concern, twisted on my heal and headed for the door.

The next Policeman who stopped me seemed more concerned than the first, so much so that he wouldn’t accept my nodding and “Si Si, Gracias” as a reasonable response to his conversation. “No problemo” I said confidently, “Uno momento” (Ok I lied, I can speak Spanish!)….I then turned around to grab my American, Spanish speaking friend, Mark.

After a few minutes it was clear that something a little more serious was happening. The police man was making “beep beep” sounds and miming key-pressing actions with his hands.

“Rob, did you take your cash card out of the machine?”……

I hadn’t, in fact It seemed I didn’t even bother to press the button which said “No more transactions” and walked away from the cash machine, leaving full access to my account. I feared the worst, assuming the policeman’s miming was a perfect description of a “bandito” withdrawing all my money, making “beep beep” sounds of glee then fleeing off to purchase all the Llama affiliated products he (or she) could buy.

Luckily, I found out the machine got bored of waiting for me and decided that eating my card would be a more entertaining use of its primitive time. So after waiting for a Peruvian half an hour (1 hour) I had my card returned to me, hopefully, not financially lighter!

The next day, after a night out on the town and a speaking to a really rude girl from Singapore we left to go to Lake Titicaca. The crazy thing about travelling is every thing you experience seems to be the most amazing thing you have experienced yet, this was no different. Firstly we visited a small Island made entirely out of reeds, then we learnt that the reeds are used for everything (food, toothbrushes, buildings, beds, curtains, boats) then we were allowed to wonder around this beautiful island, entering their houses and taking photographs of their way of life.

The most beautiful thing happened next, I, as some of you may know can do a simple magic trick which involves shoving a hankie into my hand and make it disappear. A little nervous, I sat down next to 4 really small island children and displayed my trick, at first they were just fascinated by the fact I had a red silky hankie and missed the point that I had then made it disappear. I repeated the trick to the warming sight of smiles and laughter “uno mas” (1 more) they begged, so I repeated the trick again, then more children arrived, again I repeated.

After a while with a smile of satisfaction I walked away, but got called over to the Dad of the island who wanted to see what the commotion was all about. Slightly worried I would be decapitated for preaching voodoo practices, I displayed the same trick to this 50-ish year old dude. He watched, amazed. His smile beemed from side to side and he laughed. The next time I did this trick he worked out how I did it, very rare. He pointed at me and laughed hard, real hard! The kind of laugh you do when your friend has just fallen over into a puddle of piss.

Amazing.

We then set sail to an Island inhabited by around 2000 people, and stayed with a local family with a house with no electricity, TV, phones or an inside toilet. These people were so warm, they cooked us 3 meals, spoke to us in Spanish (Quechua is their native language), joined in with our photo taking, loved looking at photos of my friends and family and hugged and kissed us when we gave them presents of rice, tuna and oil. We scaled the top of this island, which after a short game of football at 4400m above sea level was a bit of a nightmare! The altitude killed us, and the short climb was similar to climbing Everest, drunk.
At night our family (forgot about you already Mum & Dad) dressed us up in Ponchos and hats and walked us in darkness to the local village dance hall, where we danced the night away to a 5 piece local band., using only their very simple and bizarre dances!

I will briefly mention what we did in the next island as I am sure you all have important things to do.
We learnt about how the Takelia people wear hats to display there marital status, happiness and power. We learnt how the men throw stones at women to chat them up, purchased more things to make me look like a stereotypical traveller and ate various forms of coca leaves, monilla leaves and some rare stone type stuff to help us acclimatise to the altitude.

So another fun few days, tomorrow I am off to Cuzco where I will spend 2 weeks doing stuff related stuff.

Tags: Peru, Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 11th, 2005 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Peru, Travel. 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.