July 2-4: Lake Titicaca
Carolyn, Mike and I left for Puno and Lake Titicaca after a celebratory good-bye dinner with the Colca Canyon trek people. We ate at El Turko II, a fancy Peruvian restaurant with the best vanilla ice cream with ginger infused honey sauce I have ever tasted. I had alpaca chow mein and Eric (one of the Dutch guys) had guinea pig legs in chocolate mint sauce, which counts as one of the strangest dishes I saw in Peru.
It’s another eight hour bus ride from Arequipa to Puno, the jumping off point for visits to the floating reed islands in Lake Titicaca. This time I was lucky enough to have two traveling companions as the bus sped through a massive vicuña reserve where whole herds of the shy creatures grazed on inhospitable looking grasses. Vicuñas produce only 200 grams of wool each year and the garments created from it are considered some of the finest textiles in the world. The wool has a warmth-to-weight ratio like cashmere. Besides, vicuñas look much more graceful than the stocky alpaca or the clumsy llama. Vicuña = best camelid EVER.
In Puno we stayed at a hostel which touted a solar heated shower. However, I’ve found that twenty-four hour hot water is a tall order for Peru, and indeed we were terribly disappointed when we discovered that the electric showerhead did little to warm the near freezing flow after our dusty bus ride. Oh well. We booked a ticket down at the dock to the Islas Flotantes and Amantani Island and headed into town for a dinner of lovely fried trout, purportedly caught locally in the lake.
The Aymara people living on the reed islands off the shores of Lake Titicaca supposedly went out there to escape the constant aggression of the Incas. Their fascinating islands are made of totora reeds
in shallow water twenty minutes by boat from Puno’s dock. The island is made by stacking reeds in alternating directions, and the mat has to be constantly refreshed as the ones on the bottom rot away. Stones are anchored into the island when it is created and then wooden stakes hold the island to the lake bed. 
A whole series of these islands still exist today, floating within easy swimming distance of each other. Walking on the stuff is like walking on foam, where the spongy reeds give way under your foot with every step.
The island guide gave us a lecture about the island’s creation and passed out totora reeds for us to look at and eat. I was kind of curious because as I stepped off the boat, I noticed a child of about four wandering across the island chewing on the root end of one of these reeds and dragging the other six feet of plant along behind her tiny self. To eat them you peel off the outer layers and eat it like celery, although it tastes more like a cross between lettuce and cardboard.
We only had thirty minutes to look around the island, which was plenty of time because the place was probably less than 100 feet long. The islanders put up with the tourists by selling jewelry and alpaca blankets and model totora boats. If we had done the full day Islas Flotantes tour, we would have been taken to several of the islands, probably taken a totora reed boat ride,
and been forced to hear the sales pitches for many many souvenirs.
We got back on the boat for the three hour ride out to Isla Amantani where we would stay overnight with a family. 
On our way out of the reeds, I actually saw a Seventh Day Adventist church perched atop a reed island and the thought of the ramifications of modernization depressed me a bit. The Aymara lived their peaceful existence since Incan times and then the tourists and Christian missionaries had to ruin their secret.
When we disembarked at Isla Amantani a group of families came down to the dock to meet us. We were put with Rosalia, a quiet Peruvian with two friendly children, Rosalinda and Diego, who were nine and eleven. They lived in a small concrete block house with their cousin Alex, who was also nine. After a lunch of roasted vegetables (including a strange grub-like tuber that tasted like a cross between a potato and a carrot),
Rosalia led us up to the Plaza De Armas
where we met our guide to watch the sunset at Pachatata, a temple to Father Earth at the island’s highest point. From our vantage we could see all the way to Bolivia and we enjoyed a spectacular (if rather chilly) sunset while eating picarrones, fried donuts with caramelized sugar. 
We did have to walk through an onslaught of woven goods for sale and endure the constant pleas of children to buy their friendship bracelets, but in a land where tourism earns far more money than agriculture, such trials are to be expected.
The Amantani overnight is not for people used to hotels. There is no running water and very little electricity. Our restroom was an outhouse with blocks to direct you where to put your feet and we had to wash up for bed out of a communal basin. But the family was friendly and accommodating. While waiting for dinner, Rosalinda, Diego, and Alex came upstairs with Andean panpipes, a charango (a ukulele-like Peruvian guitar with ten strings as exemplified by the guy who played on the boat ride to the island)
and a drum and proceeded to play “music” for us for close to an hour. Although they were terrible at playing, they sang and danced and generally made us quite amused. Despite our suffering we couldn’t bring ourselves to make them stop. Eventually we told Diego he should have a hat for tips and we gave each kid 1 sole and asked them if they learned the instruments in school (they did), and which one was their favorite (Diego liked the charango). Rosalia eventually came upstairs with potato omelets over rice and we all sat down for a starchy dinner.
After dinner, Rosalia brought some of the islanders’ traditional dress upstairs for us to get into and took us to the super-touristy peña, a party where they play traditional music and dance around.
I only noticed a few men (Rosalia’s husband was noticeably absent, if he even exists) and most of the women seemed to barely tolerate all the commotion. But the kids had a blast. Rosalinda would drag us out on the dance floor by turns and make us dance with her. A large group of British tourists got together to teach the Peruvians The Hoky Pokey and Head Shoulders Knees And Toes. It was quite a sight watching all the women with their bright woolen skirts and black shawls putting their left foot in and out.
After about an hour, I was feeling a little sick from the forcedness of the event and luckily that was the time the whole thing was over. On our way back to the house through the moonlight we asked the kids if they had to dance every single night. “During tourist season, yes,” they said. And I asked if they didn’t ever get tired. “No!” cried Alex, who was skipping down the stone path, “Tengo adentro ochenta baterías de Duracell! (I have eighty Duracell batteries inside me!) Estoy SuperAlex.” Carolyn and I rolled our eyes. Branding had come all the way out here! But Mike said that even the Peruvians knew that Peruvian batteries were crap and don’t hold a charge.
The stars that night were amazing. There was no electricity to cause light pollution, we were at an elevation of 12,000 feet and the sky was crystal clear. The waves lapping through the lake sparkled not with moonlight but with planet light from some low hanging planet. It was gorgeous.
The next morning after a breakfast of a lonely pancake with jam (Peruvians make thin pancakes, more crepe-like than pancake-like), we bid adios to the family and found our boat again for the ride to Isla Taquile. We only had a couple hours on Taquile and much of it was spent huffing and puffing our way up five hundred steps to the Plaza De Armas at the top. The views of the intense blue of the lake again surprised us all.
Unfortunately we had to shoo away wandering children with their fistfuls of bracelets, and pay 1 sole for the use of the bathroom. But we did walk around a little 
and saw a villager who had recently caught some fish from the lake 
as well as some girls herding sheep.
There was a lovely photography exhibition in the town hall. Someone had given the islanders digital cameras to teach them the principals of photography as well as to record their daily life. I particularly liked this picture of the traditionally dressed men seeing their handiwork on an Apple computer. Very funny.
I napped the whole way back to Puno and, as we neared the town, I looked out the window to a massive conflagration. 
Some of the totora reeds had caught fire after drying out in the particularly strong sun and were burning away in a surprisingly large blaze for sitting atop a body of water.
After my first hot shower in five days (we arrived to the hostel early enough that the solar heated hot water hadn’t given out yet), I called the bus depot to discover that a group of teachers was striking and the bus I was going to take in the morning had been cancelled. There was, however, a bus leaving tonight and if I wanted I could hurry up and take it. So I bid a very hasty farewell to Carolyn and Mike and went off to the bus station to endure the worst bus ride of my life.
It’s another eight hour bus ride from Arequipa to Puno, the jumping off point for visits to the floating reed islands in Lake Titicaca. This time I was lucky enough to have two traveling companions as the bus sped through a massive vicuña reserve where whole herds of the shy creatures grazed on inhospitable looking grasses. Vicuñas produce only 200 grams of wool each year and the garments created from it are considered some of the finest textiles in the world. The wool has a warmth-to-weight ratio like cashmere. Besides, vicuñas look much more graceful than the stocky alpaca or the clumsy llama. Vicuña = best camelid EVER.
In Puno we stayed at a hostel which touted a solar heated shower. However, I’ve found that twenty-four hour hot water is a tall order for Peru, and indeed we were terribly disappointed when we discovered that the electric showerhead did little to warm the near freezing flow after our dusty bus ride. Oh well. We booked a ticket down at the dock to the Islas Flotantes and Amantani Island and headed into town for a dinner of lovely fried trout, purportedly caught locally in the lake.
The Aymara people living on the reed islands off the shores of Lake Titicaca supposedly went out there to escape the constant aggression of the Incas. Their fascinating islands are made of totora reeds
in shallow water twenty minutes by boat from Puno’s dock. The island is made by stacking reeds in alternating directions, and the mat has to be constantly refreshed as the ones on the bottom rot away. Stones are anchored into the island when it is created and then wooden stakes hold the island to the lake bed. 
A whole series of these islands still exist today, floating within easy swimming distance of each other. Walking on the stuff is like walking on foam, where the spongy reeds give way under your foot with every step.
The island guide gave us a lecture about the island’s creation and passed out totora reeds for us to look at and eat. I was kind of curious because as I stepped off the boat, I noticed a child of about four wandering across the island chewing on the root end of one of these reeds and dragging the other six feet of plant along behind her tiny self. To eat them you peel off the outer layers and eat it like celery, although it tastes more like a cross between lettuce and cardboard.
We only had thirty minutes to look around the island, which was plenty of time because the place was probably less than 100 feet long. The islanders put up with the tourists by selling jewelry and alpaca blankets and model totora boats. If we had done the full day Islas Flotantes tour, we would have been taken to several of the islands, probably taken a totora reed boat ride,
and been forced to hear the sales pitches for many many souvenirs.
We got back on the boat for the three hour ride out to Isla Amantani where we would stay overnight with a family. 
On our way out of the reeds, I actually saw a Seventh Day Adventist church perched atop a reed island and the thought of the ramifications of modernization depressed me a bit. The Aymara lived their peaceful existence since Incan times and then the tourists and Christian missionaries had to ruin their secret.When we disembarked at Isla Amantani a group of families came down to the dock to meet us. We were put with Rosalia, a quiet Peruvian with two friendly children, Rosalinda and Diego, who were nine and eleven. They lived in a small concrete block house with their cousin Alex, who was also nine. After a lunch of roasted vegetables (including a strange grub-like tuber that tasted like a cross between a potato and a carrot),
Rosalia led us up to the Plaza De Armas
where we met our guide to watch the sunset at Pachatata, a temple to Father Earth at the island’s highest point. From our vantage we could see all the way to Bolivia and we enjoyed a spectacular (if rather chilly) sunset while eating picarrones, fried donuts with caramelized sugar. 
We did have to walk through an onslaught of woven goods for sale and endure the constant pleas of children to buy their friendship bracelets, but in a land where tourism earns far more money than agriculture, such trials are to be expected.The Amantani overnight is not for people used to hotels. There is no running water and very little electricity. Our restroom was an outhouse with blocks to direct you where to put your feet and we had to wash up for bed out of a communal basin. But the family was friendly and accommodating. While waiting for dinner, Rosalinda, Diego, and Alex came upstairs with Andean panpipes, a charango (a ukulele-like Peruvian guitar with ten strings as exemplified by the guy who played on the boat ride to the island)
and a drum and proceeded to play “music” for us for close to an hour. Although they were terrible at playing, they sang and danced and generally made us quite amused. Despite our suffering we couldn’t bring ourselves to make them stop. Eventually we told Diego he should have a hat for tips and we gave each kid 1 sole and asked them if they learned the instruments in school (they did), and which one was their favorite (Diego liked the charango). Rosalia eventually came upstairs with potato omelets over rice and we all sat down for a starchy dinner.After dinner, Rosalia brought some of the islanders’ traditional dress upstairs for us to get into and took us to the super-touristy peña, a party where they play traditional music and dance around.
I only noticed a few men (Rosalia’s husband was noticeably absent, if he even exists) and most of the women seemed to barely tolerate all the commotion. But the kids had a blast. Rosalinda would drag us out on the dance floor by turns and make us dance with her. A large group of British tourists got together to teach the Peruvians The Hoky Pokey and Head Shoulders Knees And Toes. It was quite a sight watching all the women with their bright woolen skirts and black shawls putting their left foot in and out.
After about an hour, I was feeling a little sick from the forcedness of the event and luckily that was the time the whole thing was over. On our way back to the house through the moonlight we asked the kids if they had to dance every single night. “During tourist season, yes,” they said. And I asked if they didn’t ever get tired. “No!” cried Alex, who was skipping down the stone path, “Tengo adentro ochenta baterías de Duracell! (I have eighty Duracell batteries inside me!) Estoy SuperAlex.” Carolyn and I rolled our eyes. Branding had come all the way out here! But Mike said that even the Peruvians knew that Peruvian batteries were crap and don’t hold a charge.The stars that night were amazing. There was no electricity to cause light pollution, we were at an elevation of 12,000 feet and the sky was crystal clear. The waves lapping through the lake sparkled not with moonlight but with planet light from some low hanging planet. It was gorgeous.
The next morning after a breakfast of a lonely pancake with jam (Peruvians make thin pancakes, more crepe-like than pancake-like), we bid adios to the family and found our boat again for the ride to Isla Taquile. We only had a couple hours on Taquile and much of it was spent huffing and puffing our way up five hundred steps to the Plaza De Armas at the top. The views of the intense blue of the lake again surprised us all.
Unfortunately we had to shoo away wandering children with their fistfuls of bracelets, and pay 1 sole for the use of the bathroom. But we did walk around a little 
and saw a villager who had recently caught some fish from the lake 
as well as some girls herding sheep.
There was a lovely photography exhibition in the town hall. Someone had given the islanders digital cameras to teach them the principals of photography as well as to record their daily life. I particularly liked this picture of the traditionally dressed men seeing their handiwork on an Apple computer. Very funny.
I napped the whole way back to Puno and, as we neared the town, I looked out the window to a massive conflagration. 
Some of the totora reeds had caught fire after drying out in the particularly strong sun and were burning away in a surprisingly large blaze for sitting atop a body of water.After my first hot shower in five days (we arrived to the hostel early enough that the solar heated hot water hadn’t given out yet), I called the bus depot to discover that a group of teachers was striking and the bus I was going to take in the morning had been cancelled. There was, however, a bus leaving tonight and if I wanted I could hurry up and take it. So I bid a very hasty farewell to Carolyn and Mike and went off to the bus station to endure the worst bus ride of my life.
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