Lago Titikaka

This weekend my friend Sarah and I went to Lake Titicaca and spent the night on Amantaní island there. We left Cusco at 10:00 pm on Friday night and got to Puno (the city on the coast) around 5:30 the following morning. The bus was like a burning fire pit which was pretty unfortunate as it interrupted my sleeping. The journey however wasn´t all that bad (I guess I´m just so experienced riding buses with Unitarians). When we got to Puno we had to wait in the bus station for about two hours until our tour guide came to collect us. Sarah is a vegan (which makes me nostalgic for being a vegan...) and I´m a vegetarian obviously so it was pretty difficult to find anything to eat at the terminal. We ended up sharing a plate of rice and some bread (yeah, I know) before heading to the docks at Puno.

When we got there we got on a boat with 23 other folks and the tour guide and set sail for the Islas Uros. These are AMAZING. They´re floating islands in Lake Titicaca made entirely out of reeds called totora which are super versatile. The Uros people make all of their houses out of totora, use it for firewood, and even eat it. Yes, I did eat a piece of it and kind of tastes like celery mixed with water chestnuts. However, perhaps the most remarkable thing they do with totora is make boats. The boats take months and months to build and even the most exceptional ones only last for six or seven months before they rot. This is what they look like:

And oh yes, I took a ride in one (sorry Mom, no life preservers, but how can you let that make you pass up an opportunity to ride in one of those?!).

After touring the Islas Uros, we sailed to Amantaní. Amantaní is an island of about 4,000 people and I think roughly 20 villages. There is very, very minimal electricity on the island which was amazing because once the sun went down, I saw more stars than I ever knew existed (plus they´re southern hemisphere stars! How cool!). When we got to the dock at Amantaní, the group was divided up and we each went to our respective families´houses.

The dock at Amantaní

Sarah and I stayed with a family that had a husband and wife, a daughter, two sons and a granddaughter. They speak (mostly) Quechua on Amantaní and all I could remember how to say was "Thank you" and "Good afternoon." Fortunately, Sarah, the boys and I all understood the universal language of football (soccer) so we played that for awhile. Did I mention I was still wearing five layers of clothing at this point? It got kind of miserable playing so I had to excuse myself and change before I could get back to business. One of the boys kicked the ball into his brother´s face so it soon became a game between the three of us. It was really fun. We took a break to eat lunch which was all vegetarian. We had this amazing quinoa soup and oca and fried cheese (fried cheese is a really big thing in Perú. I see it everywhere I go.) which was really nice.

Afterwards the father of the family led us to the communal football field where we met up with everyone else from our group to begin our trek to the top of the island. There are two temples for Pachatata and Pachamama (Father and Mother Earth, respectively) on the top of Amantaní and we scaled up the top just in time to catch the sunset from the ruins. Everytime I think I´ve had it with climbing a really steep hill, I end up seeing something spectacular so I´ve just come to accept it. Oh, and on the way back down the hill, Sarah and I shared a quinoa doughnut!

After sunset, one of the boys from the family led us back to our house (as aforementioned, there are no streetlights or anything so it was pitch black. Luckily Sarah brought her head torch, but even still it was difficult. I have no idea how the people who live on the island get around after dark with no lights at all.) We ate dinner (another kind of delicious vegetable soup and some veggies and rice) and then took a nap before the mother of the family woke us up to take us to a dance! She dressed us in the traditional clothes of the island (Sarah and I could not stop laughing during this whole process. We looked absurd.) and then led us to their "town hall" where all of the other tourists were waiting, looking equally as absurd in their outfits. A band of young boys played for us (mostly traditional songs in Quechua, but at one point they played "La Bamba!") and we all danced. After about an hour and a half we left because Sarah and I were so tired. We were the only ones who didn´t stay in a hotel the night before in Puno, so we were beat.

After making another trek across the island in the dark, I stayed outside for awhile looking at the stars and finally decided to go to bed.

Literally how tall our door was (and yes, that is the roof grazing the top of my head)

What I saw when I woke up Sunday morning

The next morning we woke up early, ate some pancakes and headed back to the docks to set sail for Taquile. The boat ride from Amantaní to Taquile is only about an hour so I just listened to some Bruce Springsteen to get pumped up. Taquile is a really, really traditional island (even more so than Amantaní) with around 2,000 inhabitants. Virtually no one ever leaves the island and if any tourist is disrespectful, the inhabitants of the island won´t allow any tour groups to come for three months! The view from Taquile was absolutely incredible (I could see Bolivia!). Once we scaled to the main plaza, I just sat at the edge of the square and looked out over the lake for about an hour until we had to go to lunch. Lunch was kind of a debacle because even though I very thoroughly explained to our travel agent in Cusco that Sarah does not eat ANYTHING that comes from an animal, there was no vegan food for her. I talked to our tour guide and finally something got prepared for her, but I felt so bad because for awhile we thought she wouldn´t be able to eat anything (plus she had been really sick the day before and so she needed to replenish but eating anything that wasn´t vegan would´ve just been worse).

After lunch, we walked to the other side of the island and climbed down Taquile´s famous 580-step staircase (so glad we did not climb up said staircase) back to the docks. We were the last ones on the boat and soon we set sail back for Puno. It´s about a three hour boat ride from Taquile to Puno, so I sat on top of the boat (it was designed for that purpose) for the whole time because who knows when I´ll be able to see Lake Titicaca again. I loved Machu Picchu, but there was something so inexplicably incredible about being in the middle of the highest lake in the world that I think I loved Lake Titicaca just teensy bit more. If coming to Perú is the best decision I´ve made thus far (which it is), then deciding to go Lake Titicaca is the best decision I´ve made since being here.

Once we got back to Puno, we grabbed dinner and headed back to the bus station. We left Puno around 9:00 and got to Cusco at 3:30 this morning (ugh). This weekend another girl from the States arrived at my family´s house so I met her this morning. We talked for about two seconds before she had to go to Spanish class. She seems really nice. The only bad thing I think she wants to talk to me in English and I´m getting kind of tired of English so I´m going to ask her to practice Spanish with me.

This morning I went to the lavandería which I desperately needed to do. As much as I loved staying on Amantaní, I was so glad to get back to my home in Cusco (especially for the indoor plumbing and soap). The only unfortunate thing is that Sarah is leaving for Bolivia on Wednesday and then France in a week, but it´s okay because I´ll still have some friends in Cusco (plus I can always make more).

This afternoon I´m going to volunteer with the boys since I couldn´t this morning. I´m trying to change my Spanish classes so that I can work with them every day.

Allin sukha,
Adrien

P.S. Unfortunately my camera batteries died in the middle of making this post, so those are all the photos I can upload at the present moment. But I took a bunch more.