Into Peru

On Tuesday we left Titicaca in Bolivia for Titicaca in Peru, landing in Puno after a 3.5-hour enjoyable bus ride over the border. Like our Peruvian guide on Titicaca reiterated many times today, 60% of the lake belongs to Peru, and 40% to Bolivia. It is a huge lake, over 170 km long and 60 km wide. Fairly big...

Puno is BLOODY FREEZING. The town itself is quite ugly and made up of very many brown unfinished houses that cover the hill onto the lake bay. It lies at 4,000 m above sea level and it seems to have an extremely rarified type of air - both of us have been suffering various altitude problems since we have gotten here.
We ended up in hostel El Manzano, which was recommended to us as inexpensive by a Canadian lady we met at the Calvario hill in Copacabana. It is actually not too bad, the people there are extremely helpful and the place is clean and indeed inexpensive ($11 for both with bath and breakfast). We booked a tour to the islands for the next day, as recommended by the nice French couple who we met in Tarabuco, who are ahead of us and sending us tips. Aren´´t we lucky!!

It was a good tour - 2 days and 1 night to the local islands. Like Luis mentioned, it was ´good tourism´. Meaning that you spend the night with a local family and end up buying artesania from the people who actually make the goods. And a real eye-opener as to how bloody lucky we are in the developed world.
The family we stayed with was on the Amantani island, which lies at about 3.5 hours by boat from Puno. We got there at midday and were introduced to our respective families. Ours seemed pretty poor - lots of very dirty kids roaming about in the courtyard, 2 small enclosures with smelly pigs and sheep, a tiny primitive kitchen and straw beds. No electricity of course and no running water. They invested a lot of money into making 2 rooms habitable for tourists, so that they can have guests every now and then and make some dollars - the agency pays them 25 soles each ($8) for the overnight stay, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Apparently the community shares out the available tourists on an even distribution system so that everybody gets some in turn, which is great but clearly there aren´t enough tourists going to this island: our family´s ´guestbook´ showed that the prevous lot had been there a month earlier. 4 guests at $8 each once a month is not exactly going to help much? Anyways. When we got there, in the sheep stall there was a very young lamb. When I asked the family how old the lamb was, they said: what lamb? Then they looked and informed us that it had just been born!!
We were served good basic food, lots of quinoa soup and potatoes and a root called oca (or oka?) that they dig out from the ground and leave to dry before boiling it. Given the hygenic conditions of the place, I was expecting food poisoning in the night, but it didn´t happen. Some other tourists were sick overnight, but we were lucky. Or rather, the 3 other kids were unlucky, since they were the only ones. The first thing the family did was to pull out their hand-knitted hats to sell to us. We felt compelled to buy at least one for $7, with which money you can buy 3 or 4 back in town, but it really did not matter there how much they wanted. was keen to know about how much we earn and how much our cameras cost, and get pictures taken so that we can send them to them possibly along with anything else that we can spare, like kids clothes and shoes etc. It did not feel good whatsoever. After Cuba, where a similar encounter make me cry for about a week, I think I lived this one fairly well, but certainly I have not been able to take this very well either.

In the evening they dressed us up in local costumes and went down to the local square for a party with local music. It was good fun to see all of us dressed up and dancing with the village. We bought them beer and coca cola (which cost more than what we pay them for the entire stay) and danced to what seemed to me like the very same song over and over... but it was good! At one point a small child of 5 or so approached me and mumbled something...till I realised he was asking me to dance!! That was really funny, and I could not even decline!

This morning they accompanied us down to the boat and from there we went to the next island, Taquile. This island seemed a lot richer, somehow. Here, tourists tend to stop for a trout lunch more than family stays. So we had a good trout lunch with the unmissable quinoa soup and then salied on to the Uros Islands, which are just 25 mins from Puno. These islands are really curious: they float! They are made with the lake´s totora, long reeds that they pile up and bundle together to make their islands! The place looks predominantly yellow and really cute. We stopped at two of them, bought some artesania from the ladies, and then returned to base. By the time we got there the sun was gone, which was a pity, since when it´s out it brings out the yellow of the reeds.

Tomorrow we are off to Arequipa, apparently the Peruvian equivalent of Sucre in Bolivia. Both called white cities because they are ´colonially´white and beautiful. CORRECTION: called white city because the colonial houses are built in sillar, which is a vulcanic white stone.

Our host family

The food, oca and potatoes

The brand new lamb

Amantani party

Uros Islands