Peru trip day 11; Wed Oct 21
At this point in the trip, my enthusiasm for travel journalling waned, and I was really missing my boyfriend and cat fiercely. But this day was the last highlight of the trip. I did my best to enjoy it, and I will do my best to recount it because this area of Peru is a lot less travelled. Even our Peru tourbook was disappointingly slim on this region.
My camera's memory was full of pictures, so the night before I went through them all and deleted the blurry ones, repeats, and nonsense pictures to make room for today, because I was expecting great lake vistas and local color, and on that score I was not dissapointed!
http://picasaweb.google.com/smsimonson/Peru?feat=content_notification#
Tooling around Lake Titicaca, after the cut.
Our hotel had a big dining room where they laid out a massive breakfast consisting of cereal, yogurt, juices and teas, bread and pastries, meat and cheese cold cuts, and made to order eggs. I was feeling daring enough to drink the fruit juice because we were almost done with the trip.
We were then taken down to the docks, were lots of identical tour boats were loading. Our boat was like a floating bus, with a central aisle and 2 seats on either side of the aisle, and 10 rows of seats. There were extra amenities, like a tea service station, and a small head in the back. The boat guide came around to ask everyone what language they wanted him to narrate in, and he was surprised that we were American. “I was thinking perhaps French”. I took this as a compliment, but I did puzzle over what was “French” about us. My best thought on this (other than that he was just trying to flatter) was that I had just been helping Steve study for French the last couple of weeks, and he’d been telling me that the French give each syllable the same length and weight. I had been keeping that in mind, and one thing I’d been doing very consciously was speaking English like a non-native speaker in the cadence and vocabulary, so that someone with non-fluent English could follow along.
Our first stop was the floating Uros islands which are parked within site of Puno. Each island is less than an acre in size and they are all arranged closely, flotilla style. There were a series of “show islands” setup to receive tourists, each one styled to show off the Urvos traditional lifestyle, where absolutely everything is made of reeds.
They had us sit on a “log” made of millions of reeds gathered into a cable 2ft thick and bent into a U. Our boat guide demonstrated that the reeds which form the island and almost everything on it are also edible, and he said their alternate name is Titicaca banana, because to eat, you peel off the skin of the reed like a banana. He ate about 6 inches of exposed flesh off the bottom of the reed then threw down the remainder where it became indistinguishable from the rest of the flooring.
Then they put on a show with an adorable little puppet sized island to explain how the islands are made, while our boat guide translated from Urvan into Spanish and English.
First, they cut underneath the reed roots until the mass of reeds breaks away from the lakebed as a freefloating thing. Then, using rope and balsa wood stakes, they anchor the island where they want it. The top of the island is covered in freshly cut reeds, forming a green, spongy floor that felt sort of like walking on a mattress. To demonstrate this, our puppeteer stacked little reed shreds on his tiny island in perpendicular layers.
Next, he setup a couple of small house structures made of reeds, as well as a lookout tower.
Mom and I had been wondering how they cooked, and now we got our answer. They use a multichambered and multilevel ceramic cookware, with one large chamber on bottom in which to build a tiny fire, and two shallow bowl depressions on top, where they can rest a ceramic bowl. This keeps the fire nicely contained and raised up above the reed floor. And of course, they burn reeds.
As a final step our puppeteer pulled out a male and female doll dressed in their traditional clothing and put them on their new little island paradise. Cue applause. The Urvos people are short and stocky, for a conveniently low center of gravity. They are significantly chubbier than anyone else we’ve seen in Peru.
For the next portion of the visit, one of the Urvon women grabbed me and mom by the hand and led us to one of the reed huts. Like I said, this was a show island, and this was clearly not her house. Inside there was a bed/couch made of reeds, and many sizes and colors of Urvos clothing hanging from all the walls. She dressed us up, in their bold and brightly colored felted wool clothing, horizontally striped full skirts and solid colored short jackets, and huge yarn pompoms tied to the ends of hair braids. She spoke very little English, but offered to take a picture of us with my camera.
After dress-up, she led us to a blanket where she was offering wares for sale. This was the highest pressure sales situation yet, because we felt somewhat obligated after our welcome and the show. She knew one sentence of English: “Please, this is my work”. She had small tapestry style weavings depicting their gods, the Urvos lifestyle, and their origin story of escape from the conquering Incans.
The Urvos used to live on the shore of the lake, and went fishing in reed and balsa boats. When the Incans made it this far south, they conquered and absorbed everyone into their empire which I have described in a previous post works on reciprocity, were all the goods of production, and several prime years of all young males lives, are given up to the state, which redistributes back to the people. The Urvos did not like this deal, so they built bigger reed boats and sailed out into the center of the lake, where they lived on their boats for a time. The Incans had no boats and could not follow. Later, they figured out the clever floating reed islands.
Next to our host’s blanket was another blanket covered in toys and trinkets made of reeds, such as small boats, dolls, mobiles of birds and fish, etc. When I showed interest in these, her husband sidled up and said “this is my work.” I bought a reed boat and mom bought a small tapestry. I keep this boat in my cubicle, to remind me that its important to make the best of what you’ve got.
For the final component of our visit, we were all invited to ride in one of their boats, a double hulled beauty with graceful dragon heads on each prow, completely covered in reeds, with a balsawood raised platform for us to sit on. Our guide explained that the hulls were filled with plastic bottles, for flotation ballast. They serenaded us with their folk songs while we boarded. While they rowed us down the waterway “street”, from our perch on the raised platform we were able to see behind the show islands to the slightly bigger islands where they obviously lived.
For the actual modern life of the Urvos, they live in wooden homes with metal or plastic sheet roofs, and use solar panels as power source for light and heat, since fire is so dangerous for them. Our guide also pointed out the school and the hospital, although he claimed they prefer traditional remedies. Our tourbook claimed this was more because they were too poor to afford modern medicine. We saw dredge nets used for fishing, and of course tourism is their main industry. Fruit is very rare and highly prized on all the islands of the lake.
The second microculture we visited that day was the Island of Tacquile. This required a 2 hour boat ride out of the inlet and into the main body of the lake, where we finally could see its true size. The opposite shore was not visible until we reached Tacquile which is fairly central in the lake.
Walking up the stone path from the pier to the town center was enough to rob us all of breath and energy. A couple from Australia pointed out that all the trees on this island were eucalyptus, which they found very odd since these are water-needy trees and the climate here is arid. In hindsight I don’t quite understand their worry, since surely these trees had roots extending down to the lake level. We were really feeling the ennervating effect of altitude, and yet now we were the vigorous people on the tour. We had to wait for what felt like half an hour in the town square for all the stragglers to arrive.
The town square had a dominant position at the highest point of the island, and one side of the square was a low wall overlooking the lake, where we sat and rested while young girls came around offering friendship bracelets for sale. The second side of the square was the tourism center, which was a large indoor market where they were selling all kinds of woolen goods like ponchos, sweaters and caps. Tacquile is known for their woolwork. The third side of the square was the community center, which contained a display of professional photographs from around the island, the island ISP, the town hall and the mayor’s office. The last side was the church, which was closed to visitors.
The industry of the local people consists of growing potatoes and corn on tiny farmplots with stone fences, fishing, weaving, raising sheep and chickens and of course tourism.
We ate lunch on Tacquile, in a normal man's home. He was offering a choice of lake trout or omlette with a side of rice, mom had the former and I had the latter.
On Tacquile, the people directly control the tourism and do not allow hotels or restaurants or chain stores or anything foreign owned. They know that their microculture is their draw, so they closely protect it from outside influence. Their affairs are run by the elders, and a mayor is nominated every year. Serving as mayor is considered a massive chore, that everyone has to do once out of duty. The social structure is delineated with various kinds of wool caps, unmarried men wear one color, married men wear another. Women wear black ponchos and caps with long trails, and unmarried women adorn their caps with giant yarn pompoms.
Coca is highly prized on Tacquile, because it can't be grown in this region and is imported from far away, and yet each man carries a coca pouch on his belt and when he greets another man they are expected to offer each other a bit of their coca. We had left our leftover coca behind in Cusco, if only we'd known!
We read in the tourbook that its also possible to stay overnight with a host family, but to bring your own sleeping bags because the nights are cold. It also recommended bringing fresh fruit as gifts for the host family. The local diet is mostly vegetarian with fish and little red meat but this is by necessity since all domestic animals are raised more for their products: wool, milk, eggs.
We walked down the back side of the island where the boat had circled around to meet us, and spent another 2 hours on the return to Puno. The boat had an upper open air deck where we spent alot of time, even though mom usually hates windy conditions.
At the return to Puno port, we had a bad moment when we lost our guide, and wandered up and down the pier looking for him while I tried hard to recall how to walk back to our hotel if necessary. Finally our guide ran up to us, looking a little miffed, and led us to a bus. The bus driver spoke no English, but I was able to understand his question of “which Hotel?” Luckilly, mom had brought the waterbottle provided by the hotel, which had a label with the hotel’s name on it and we showed this to the driver.
My camera's memory was full of pictures, so the night before I went through them all and deleted the blurry ones, repeats, and nonsense pictures to make room for today, because I was expecting great lake vistas and local color, and on that score I was not dissapointed!
http://picasaweb.google.com/smsimonson/Peru?feat=content_notification#
Tooling around Lake Titicaca, after the cut.
Our hotel had a big dining room where they laid out a massive breakfast consisting of cereal, yogurt, juices and teas, bread and pastries, meat and cheese cold cuts, and made to order eggs. I was feeling daring enough to drink the fruit juice because we were almost done with the trip.
We were then taken down to the docks, were lots of identical tour boats were loading. Our boat was like a floating bus, with a central aisle and 2 seats on either side of the aisle, and 10 rows of seats. There were extra amenities, like a tea service station, and a small head in the back. The boat guide came around to ask everyone what language they wanted him to narrate in, and he was surprised that we were American. “I was thinking perhaps French”. I took this as a compliment, but I did puzzle over what was “French” about us. My best thought on this (other than that he was just trying to flatter) was that I had just been helping Steve study for French the last couple of weeks, and he’d been telling me that the French give each syllable the same length and weight. I had been keeping that in mind, and one thing I’d been doing very consciously was speaking English like a non-native speaker in the cadence and vocabulary, so that someone with non-fluent English could follow along.
Our first stop was the floating Uros islands which are parked within site of Puno. Each island is less than an acre in size and they are all arranged closely, flotilla style. There were a series of “show islands” setup to receive tourists, each one styled to show off the Urvos traditional lifestyle, where absolutely everything is made of reeds.
They had us sit on a “log” made of millions of reeds gathered into a cable 2ft thick and bent into a U. Our boat guide demonstrated that the reeds which form the island and almost everything on it are also edible, and he said their alternate name is Titicaca banana, because to eat, you peel off the skin of the reed like a banana. He ate about 6 inches of exposed flesh off the bottom of the reed then threw down the remainder where it became indistinguishable from the rest of the flooring.
Then they put on a show with an adorable little puppet sized island to explain how the islands are made, while our boat guide translated from Urvan into Spanish and English.
First, they cut underneath the reed roots until the mass of reeds breaks away from the lakebed as a freefloating thing. Then, using rope and balsa wood stakes, they anchor the island where they want it. The top of the island is covered in freshly cut reeds, forming a green, spongy floor that felt sort of like walking on a mattress. To demonstrate this, our puppeteer stacked little reed shreds on his tiny island in perpendicular layers.
Next, he setup a couple of small house structures made of reeds, as well as a lookout tower.
Mom and I had been wondering how they cooked, and now we got our answer. They use a multichambered and multilevel ceramic cookware, with one large chamber on bottom in which to build a tiny fire, and two shallow bowl depressions on top, where they can rest a ceramic bowl. This keeps the fire nicely contained and raised up above the reed floor. And of course, they burn reeds.
As a final step our puppeteer pulled out a male and female doll dressed in their traditional clothing and put them on their new little island paradise. Cue applause. The Urvos people are short and stocky, for a conveniently low center of gravity. They are significantly chubbier than anyone else we’ve seen in Peru.
For the next portion of the visit, one of the Urvon women grabbed me and mom by the hand and led us to one of the reed huts. Like I said, this was a show island, and this was clearly not her house. Inside there was a bed/couch made of reeds, and many sizes and colors of Urvos clothing hanging from all the walls. She dressed us up, in their bold and brightly colored felted wool clothing, horizontally striped full skirts and solid colored short jackets, and huge yarn pompoms tied to the ends of hair braids. She spoke very little English, but offered to take a picture of us with my camera.
After dress-up, she led us to a blanket where she was offering wares for sale. This was the highest pressure sales situation yet, because we felt somewhat obligated after our welcome and the show. She knew one sentence of English: “Please, this is my work”. She had small tapestry style weavings depicting their gods, the Urvos lifestyle, and their origin story of escape from the conquering Incans.
The Urvos used to live on the shore of the lake, and went fishing in reed and balsa boats. When the Incans made it this far south, they conquered and absorbed everyone into their empire which I have described in a previous post works on reciprocity, were all the goods of production, and several prime years of all young males lives, are given up to the state, which redistributes back to the people. The Urvos did not like this deal, so they built bigger reed boats and sailed out into the center of the lake, where they lived on their boats for a time. The Incans had no boats and could not follow. Later, they figured out the clever floating reed islands.
Next to our host’s blanket was another blanket covered in toys and trinkets made of reeds, such as small boats, dolls, mobiles of birds and fish, etc. When I showed interest in these, her husband sidled up and said “this is my work.” I bought a reed boat and mom bought a small tapestry. I keep this boat in my cubicle, to remind me that its important to make the best of what you’ve got.
For the final component of our visit, we were all invited to ride in one of their boats, a double hulled beauty with graceful dragon heads on each prow, completely covered in reeds, with a balsawood raised platform for us to sit on. Our guide explained that the hulls were filled with plastic bottles, for flotation ballast. They serenaded us with their folk songs while we boarded. While they rowed us down the waterway “street”, from our perch on the raised platform we were able to see behind the show islands to the slightly bigger islands where they obviously lived.
For the actual modern life of the Urvos, they live in wooden homes with metal or plastic sheet roofs, and use solar panels as power source for light and heat, since fire is so dangerous for them. Our guide also pointed out the school and the hospital, although he claimed they prefer traditional remedies. Our tourbook claimed this was more because they were too poor to afford modern medicine. We saw dredge nets used for fishing, and of course tourism is their main industry. Fruit is very rare and highly prized on all the islands of the lake.
The second microculture we visited that day was the Island of Tacquile. This required a 2 hour boat ride out of the inlet and into the main body of the lake, where we finally could see its true size. The opposite shore was not visible until we reached Tacquile which is fairly central in the lake.
Walking up the stone path from the pier to the town center was enough to rob us all of breath and energy. A couple from Australia pointed out that all the trees on this island were eucalyptus, which they found very odd since these are water-needy trees and the climate here is arid. In hindsight I don’t quite understand their worry, since surely these trees had roots extending down to the lake level. We were really feeling the ennervating effect of altitude, and yet now we were the vigorous people on the tour. We had to wait for what felt like half an hour in the town square for all the stragglers to arrive.
The town square had a dominant position at the highest point of the island, and one side of the square was a low wall overlooking the lake, where we sat and rested while young girls came around offering friendship bracelets for sale. The second side of the square was the tourism center, which was a large indoor market where they were selling all kinds of woolen goods like ponchos, sweaters and caps. Tacquile is known for their woolwork. The third side of the square was the community center, which contained a display of professional photographs from around the island, the island ISP, the town hall and the mayor’s office. The last side was the church, which was closed to visitors.
The industry of the local people consists of growing potatoes and corn on tiny farmplots with stone fences, fishing, weaving, raising sheep and chickens and of course tourism.
We ate lunch on Tacquile, in a normal man's home. He was offering a choice of lake trout or omlette with a side of rice, mom had the former and I had the latter.
On Tacquile, the people directly control the tourism and do not allow hotels or restaurants or chain stores or anything foreign owned. They know that their microculture is their draw, so they closely protect it from outside influence. Their affairs are run by the elders, and a mayor is nominated every year. Serving as mayor is considered a massive chore, that everyone has to do once out of duty. The social structure is delineated with various kinds of wool caps, unmarried men wear one color, married men wear another. Women wear black ponchos and caps with long trails, and unmarried women adorn their caps with giant yarn pompoms.
Coca is highly prized on Tacquile, because it can't be grown in this region and is imported from far away, and yet each man carries a coca pouch on his belt and when he greets another man they are expected to offer each other a bit of their coca. We had left our leftover coca behind in Cusco, if only we'd known!
We read in the tourbook that its also possible to stay overnight with a host family, but to bring your own sleeping bags because the nights are cold. It also recommended bringing fresh fruit as gifts for the host family. The local diet is mostly vegetarian with fish and little red meat but this is by necessity since all domestic animals are raised more for their products: wool, milk, eggs.
We walked down the back side of the island where the boat had circled around to meet us, and spent another 2 hours on the return to Puno. The boat had an upper open air deck where we spent alot of time, even though mom usually hates windy conditions.
At the return to Puno port, we had a bad moment when we lost our guide, and wandered up and down the pier looking for him while I tried hard to recall how to walk back to our hotel if necessary. Finally our guide ran up to us, looking a little miffed, and led us to a bus. The bus driver spoke no English, but I was able to understand his question of “which Hotel?” Luckilly, mom had brought the waterbottle provided by the hotel, which had a label with the hotel’s name on it and we showed this to the driver.