Puno and Cuzco

As a result of running around visiting islands in Lake Titicaca, when I returned to the lakeside town of Puno, I completely forgot it was Good Friday. In the evening about 7 o´clock, I walked out of the internet cafe just as a procession was coming toward me. At the front was a priest and altar boys and behind them was a glass casket. Inside the casket was a statue of the dead Christ. The casket was carried on the shoulders of about a dozen men. Behind them was the Peruvian Navy marching band, about 15 strong, playing a funeral dirge. (Peru, just like Bolivia, has a navy contingent stationed at Lake Titicaca for reasons probably no one knows.) And of course behind them all were hundreds of locals all carrying candles and looking mournful. The people of the Andes may mesh their Catholicism with their ancient (Tiwanaku and Inca) beliefs, but they definitely take their Catholicism seriously!

Today I arrived by bus in Cuzco. After having spent several weeks in Bolivia and in the high Andes of southern Peru, landing in Cuzco is a bit like walking through the dirt roads of the Los Padres Forest and landing in Carmel! And the prices feel like Carmel as well!

The ride here from Puno was really interesting. The firt couple of hours we were on the high plateau of the Andes, much like driving up Hwy. 395 to Alturas. We went up to a summit with snow-crested peaks all around and then started descending through more than a dozen valleys. The landscape reminded me very much of Switzerland: lush green valleys and steep green mountains going way up on either side, with a river or creek rushing down the middle.

In Switzerland, there are cows grazing in the valleys and on the mountain slopes. Here, there is a mixture of cows, burros, llamas, alpacas, and sheep! And there´s always a human standing around somewhere watching them. In both Switzerland and here, the valley floor has scattered houses. However, here the houses are adobe with red tile roofs. One unfortunate thing about all of South America is the people´s complete disregard for the environment. The sides of the road near the towns are littered with garbage, sometimes with dogs digging through it. What a shame. This characteristic of Latin Americans however is not going to change, if at all, for centuries.

I am sitting here in this restaurant, because I´m starving after that long bus ride. The restaurant is about 10 feet by 20 feet. The door is open and it´s started to hail outside! After it started hailing, the waiter went to the door, shivered a little bit, and put a jacket on! The door remained open. The nice thing about the showers here is that they blow away in 20 minutes.

It seems like in most places I´ve been in South America so far, I´ve been the only gringo on the street, or on the bus, or wherever. Not so here! The little hotel I´m in is on a plaza pretty high up the hill from the center of town. I picked it because I figured most tourists would opt for accomodations easy to walk to, not up steep cobblestone streets. Instead the place seems filled with American and European tourists. Cuzco of course is the jumping off place for Machu Pichu, so that explains a lot. However, it´s also the "shoulder season" so I figured there wouldn´t be a whole lot of action going on....WRONG!! This place must feel like an American town in our summer months, the dry season here.

Well, the shower has stopped. Time to go explore Cuzco. Hasta luego!

Island(s) in the Sun

Even though I´m still at Lake Titicaca, greetings from Puno, Peru! Just like Lake Tahoe, the borderline between Bolivia and Peru runs down the middle of the lake. The indigenous folks are the same on both sides of the lake but the similarity ends there. I definitely feel like I´ve left a third world country and entered maybe a "second" world country. The infrastructure here in Peru is more advanced. My hotel room is genuinely, spotlessly clean. How refreshing! How nice! Although I must admit I´m paying handsomely for it: $11 a night, instead of the $2.50 a night I spent a few days ago in Copacabana, Bolivia.

When I arrived here at the bus station, I had no idea whether it was 1 km. or 10 km. to the center of town where the hotels are. My map simply showed an arrow pointing off the map indicating the bus station was somewhere off the map. I walked out of the bus station intent on simply marching into town, with my heavy backpack, regardless of the distance. The taxi drivers pestered me to have them drive me. I turned them down. There are car taxis, there are moto-taxis where a cab is attached to the back end of a motorcycle, and, last but not least, there are pedi-taxis. These are bicycles with a cab in the front looking like something out of Hong Kong. After I walked about 2 to 3 blocks, I realized there were no street signs whatever and that, wherever I was, it was well off my map.

About that time, an old man (my age?) pedalled up in his pedi-taxi and asked if I wanted a ride. I told him the name of a hotel near the city center that I found in the guidebook. He said 60 cents, so I said okay. It turned out to be about 2 miles away. At times, the streets were pretty steep uphill and the poor guy had to get off and push. I realized I never would have made it all the way to the hotel with my backpack at this 12,000 ft. elevation without a number of rest stops. This poor guy just kept pedaling away, but I could hear him gasping and grunting behind me. When we finally arrived, he was obviously exhausted. Who wouldn´t be??!! I gave him 30 cents extra. Gee, what a big spender I am. I felt terrible for this poor guy. I just don´t think humans should be beasts of burden. At any rate, when I leave for the bus station on Saturday, I´m going to take one of those moto-taxis!

There are two very big tribes of indigenous people, the Aymara (of which Bolibian Pres. Evo Morales is a member) and the Quechua. However there are dozens of other small tribes as well. One of these is the Uros.

Centuries ago, the Uros figured out they were too small in numbers to defend their property from the marauding bigger tribes. So, they simply walked away from their land and built floating islands of of the reeds that grow thickly on the shoreline. They piled reeds upon reeds and tied them all together. Nowadays, there are 2,000 people (!) still living on these floating islands. They survive by fishing and of course by selling junk to tourists. To keep the islands from actually floating away, they tie them down to the lake floor with lines. Over time, the reeds at the bottom of the island begin to rot, so the islanders just keep adding reeds to the top. If you´re friends with another family, you join your islands together. If you decide to part ways, you do exactly that. The biggest island contains a school, post office, lots of souvenir shops, and even a "hotel" of sorts where you can spend the night inside a reed hut on one of the reed islands. There´s no running water and no electricity. Everyone agrees to pee and poop on one side of the island and drink the water out of the other side. Hmmmmm....

When I stepped off the tour boat, there were about 30 of us. The island was gushy wet reeds that sank a little bit like a sponge when you walked. We all sat on reed logs in a semi-circle to meet the chief who explained how the islands were made. At the end of the talk everyone had a wet bottom. Regrettably, he said the kids go to high school in town and experience such luxuries as cable tv, video games, the internet, etc., and to no one´s surprise, they don´t want to return to a floating island. So, says the chief, the islands are about one generation away from extinction.

Tomorrow, I´m off to Cusco! Caiao!

Andes Mountain High

Greetings from Lake Titicaca! This lake is huge. It sits at 12,500 feet above sea level at the top of the Andes, making it the highest "big" lake in the world. Apparently, geologists say that when the Andes rose up from the ocean floor, this lake came with it. It´s 120 miles long and 60 miles wide.

The landscape reminds me very much of Greek islands: the white washed church, cobblestone streets leading down to the sea/lake, fields of what looks like scrub brush separated by rock fences. There are herds of sheep just like in Greece, but also herds of llamas, not like in Greece.

Leaving La Paz for here was like leaving San Francisco for Lake Tahoe. We left the teeming narrow noisy streets of the big city and I´m now in the town of Copacabana...about the size of Quincy. I´m sitting in the (wonderful!) warm sun at 4 in the afternoon, drinking my cup of espresso and luxuriating.

Enroute, we had to cross an arm of the lake. There´s no bridge. So everyone had to get off the bus and get into little boats (also like Greece) to cross the one mile wide strait. The bus is put onto a wooden barge which has about 6 inches of freeboard at the stern and about 2 feet at the bow. That´s because the bus sits at an angle of about 20 degrees to the stern. The bus sways dramatically from side to side as it crosses the strait in this barge which is barely bigger than it. Apparently, several years ago, they let passengers stay on the bus. One day the wind was a little too strong and the bus and all its passengers went to the bottom. So now, we passengers have to climb into these little launches. At least it had a cabin! There were about 20 of us in the boat and they boasted 6 life jackets hung up for display.

Tiwanaku was the cultural and religious center for the inhabitants of the Andes for over 2000 years. The Incas moved in about 1500 C.E. and they made the Island of the Sun, just offshore from Copacabana, their religious center. According to Inca myth, the Island of the Sun is the place where the sun and moon were created and the Inca dynasty was born. Under the Incas, the island became a pilgrimmage site and people from hundreds of miles away made the trek to the island. The island is supposed to possess a religious tranquility, located as it is in a lake on the top of the world. Nowadays, there are an equal number of pilgrims, called tourists, who travel long distances to admire it.

The Catholic Church quickly glommed onto the Inca (and subsequently Aymara) people´s sense of reverence for the place. The Church built a huge cathedral way out of proportion to this otherwise little town. As a result, this has become Bolivia´s most important shrine. The church is called the Virgin of Copacabana and each year on Aug. 5th, thousands of worshipers come here from all over the country. They also come on June 21st, the winter solstice and Aymara New Year, where ceremonies are performed as well, but not Catholic ones.

The Island of the Sun, two hours offshore from Copacabana, boasts three hamlets and Inca ruins scattered everywhere. As usual, the conquistadors made off with all the gold and jewels and the church took all the big stones to make the cathedral. The locals on the island fish, herd llamas, raise crops between rock fences, and sell food to tourists. The lead menu item everywhere is trout.

I find the fishing boats fascinating, probably because I find most boats fascinating. They have a surprisingly high bow and stern, looking like they´re prepared for any kind of bad weather. The mast is stepped about one third of the distance from the bow and the boat is very wide, making it easier to haul in fish. The sail is a lateen sail, looking like it could have been imported off the Nile River in Egypt without modifications. They also carry oars, since the wind, as on most lakes, can by flukey. I talked to a fisherman/sailor here. He says he catches about 10 fish a day on average and he spread his hands indicating that the trout could get well over 2 feet in length. Keep in mind that it was the fisherman that told me this. I do know from the trout I ate a couple of days ago in Coroico that the trout can definitely get big!

The sky and the lake water really are remarkably blue and both seem very vast. Despite the pressure of numerous stands selling tourist kitsch and fresh fried trout and the pronounced presence of foreigners, the place still has a mystical feel to it that overcomes all the other stuff.