Lake Titicaca

When I was little, I really liked a Disney cartoon where Donald Duck visited Lake Titicaca. I don’t remember much except it was some sort of educational travel themed thing. Anyway, the only reason I wanted to come to Lake Titicaca was because of that cartoon, kind of like the only reason I want to go to Cartagena is because of Romancing the Stone (even though they filmed it in Mexico). So yay, I just did Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world.

Chris and I signed up for a two day tour through our hostel Los Pinos. For about $20 each, we toured three different islands, were fed, and stayed overnight with a host family. Our first sets of islands were the floating islands of Uros. People decided it would be a good idea to build islands out of reeds. They anchor each island to the bottom of the lake (it’s pretty shallow) and each week have to add reeds to the top of the island because it’s constantly broken down by the water. They build their homes and boats out of the reeds as well. I thought the whole thing seemed pretty staged and touristy and we were asked to give little bits of money for everything from a tour of their homes, to paying some kid that sang songs, and paying to ride a traditional boat across the river.

After Uros, we had a long boat ride (we found out later the engine on the boat was a car engine and the only speed was slllllloooooooooooow) to the island of Amantani. This is an actual island (not a reed island) and we stayed the night with a host family. Our host family were potato and vegetable farmers. The husband was 32 and his wife was 36 (but we both guessed her age to be somewhere around 50… but not out loud) and they had three little kids. Grandma and Grandpa lived there as well but we were never introduced. They spoke Quechua at home and Spanish to us so there was never much chance to bond. It was interesting, again, to see how flippin spoiled we are in the States. When I am in situations like this, I just feel like such an asshole. They had no indoor plumbing, no TV, electricity was scarce, the kitchen stove was a fire, no toothbrushes that I could see, and no heating. Everyone wears open toed rubber sandals (causing the most disgusting feet I have ever seen) and have no trouble bounding up large mountains in very high altitudes. There are no cars on the island and everyone exists through farming and tourism. The food served was in small portions and there was lots of soup, but it was good and fresh and homegrown. Meat is scarce so we had lots of potatoes and quinoa and tea with small branches stuck in the cup for flavor (it’s called muna and it’s a kind of mint).

That night the dad dressed us up in their traditional clothes and took us to a little tourist dance at the community center. It was dumb but nice they made the effort. There is no electricity throughout the island at night so flashlights are a must and I have seriously never seen so many stars in my life. The Milky Way was very milky.

The next day we headed to the boat for another island called Taquile. We left our host family our trip snacks and they were super pumped for avocados, bread, tomatoes, and oranges and. Taquile is a communist society, and everyone exists off the same amount of money and resources. All of the prices on the knit goods are fixed and every restaurant charges the same thing and serves the exact same dish… every single day. Boring. The views were excellent and we had plenty of time to make friends with everyone in our tourist group.

I’m sorry we don’t have any photos up from Cusco or Lake Titicaca. We usually upload our photos through Chris’ laptop with a wireless signal. We’ve gone crazy through Puno trying to find a place with WiFi and everyone looks at us like we’re retarded and making up some new word. So hopefully they have fixed the signal at our hostel in Cusco (we’ll be back there on Thursday) and we can get our stuff up then.

So it’s Cusco on Thursday and on Sunday we start our four day hike on the Inca Trail for Machu Picchu. After that, we fly to Lima and then bus it north for the beaches near the Ecuador border and my 29th birthday. Super. Right now, we’re just killing time in Puno… a town you need about half a day to see, we’re stuck in for about four. Good times.

Cusco and Puno

Chris wrote the following blog but his computer at the internet cafe is special and will not accept our flash drive, mine seems to be fine with it, so here is Chris and his thoughts...

We arrived in Cusco from Nazca via yet another stinky bus ride. We had to sit next to the toilet for 14 hours. The only time it didn’t smell like a bus toilet was when someone was smoking in there. Then it smelled like an Amsterdam coffee shop. Either nobody else noticed or nobody cared. It wasn’t my business and I was happy that it didn’t smell like a dirty toilet for five minutes.

We got to Cusco on time even though the bus was about an hour late leaving, which was nice. Cusco is by far the most touristy town we have been to on this trip. When you walk around near the main plaza, you are constantly bombarded with requests to find out more about someone’s tour package to Macchu Pichu, to eat at their restaurant or to buy their various arts and crafts. I understand that most of these people are very poor and that there is a lot of competition for the tourist dollar, but it gets old after a while.

Aside from being hassled constantly to buy things, we did have a good time in Cusco. Stefani’s friend Liz and her friend Matt came out to visit. I’m sure Stef will have more to write about that. We all went on a city tour arranged by our hostel that turned out to be pretty lame. The best part was probably when we got away from the group to enjoy a happy hour drink while watching all the people in the plaza. We saw a few archeological sites of interest on the tour, but we were pretty much rushed through them. We were supposed to take another tour the next day through some ruins in the Sacred Valley, but we cancelled it and just hired a taxi driver to drive us around all day. This cost half as much as the tour would have and we didn’t have to ride around with a bunch of people on a tour bus. We also got to make our own schedule, which made things a lot more enjoyable.

Cusco is quite a bit more expensive than other places we’ve been in Peru, but we still managed to find some good places to eat for pretty cheap. There are lots of places recommended by the guide books, but once a place gets in there they usually jack up their prices. We found a great burrito place across the street from a great pizza place and had dinner twice one night. I’m sure both these places will wind up in the guide books soon enough, so I’m glad I got to go there before the word got out.

We are now in Puno on the coast of Lake Titicaca. The altitude here is around 3800 meters or 12,500 feet. It is the highest navigable lake in the world and home of many indigenous people of Peru that live on various islands on the Lake. We will be visiting some of these islands over the next few days. I am looking forward to this, but it comes at a great price to me. This Sunday is the Indy 500. Since 1984, I have missed this event only once in 1990 and I listened to it on the radio that year. We also missed the opening of the new Indiana Jones movie, as Cusco has no movie theater. Eventually we will be in a town that has one, though, and will get to see it. The Race, however, is a completely different story. I don’t think I would be able to find it at any of the bars in Puno and it doesn’t matter anyways, because we will be in the middle of Lake Titicaca on some island that doesn’t even have electricity. Oh well, I’ll be back next year. And to all of my friends in Indy…Have fun at the Race and have a beer or two for me.