Uros, Amantani and Taquile Islands (June 8-9, 2006)

:: June 8 ::

The tour today took us to the famous floating islands of the Uros people. They build the islands from reeds and mud, and anchor them in place so they don’t float around. They have lived like this for close to 1000 years, and fled to the lake to escape warring Inca and Challa tribes. It was very cool to walk on the squishy surface, and interesting to learn about their way of life. There are forty different islands, and approximately four or five families live on each island. We visited two of the islands – Santa Maria and Kamisaraki (which means “hello” in Quechua). Of course, on each island the people are selling their wares, as a means to support themselves, so we were sucked into buying a woven tapestry and a pillow case.

Next stop after the Uros islands was Amantani Island (after a three-hour boat ride!), where people have been settled for thousands of years as well. The local families have set up a system where they take two or three tourists each and provide room and board. Our family was a single mother named Norma, her seven-year old son (William) and her 77-year old mother. Norma was only 25 years old, but she worked very hard to maintain the family home and crops. Her father had died in November, William’s father doesn’t want to have anything to do with him and won’t provide any money for support, and the mother of William’s father lives near Norma and is very mean to her. How sad! She has dreams of going to Lima to work (she spent some time there when she was a teenager), but she has to wait until William is done his schooling. The language spoken on the island is Quechua, but Norma spoke very good Spanish as well.

Norma made us some yummy soup for lunch, as well as some potatoes and carrot-type vegetables with cheese for lunch. We had bought some supplies to give her as a gift (sugar, rice, pasta, cookies) that she was thankful for. William polished off all the cookies before dinner! After we ate lunch, we met back up with the rest of the group and our guide, Esteban, to hike up to a lookout and the ruins of a temple to Pachatata (father of the earth) to watch the sunset. The view from up there was great. I was harassed by some local girls to buy a woven bracelet and they kept bugging me to buy another one until Lincoln gave them each a Canada flag pin.

We came back down and met up with our “Mamasitas” again to go back to their house for dinner, which was again a yummy soup and rice with a potato stew. Most of their diet is vegetarian, which is fine by me. After dinner, the families dress up the tourists in the typical local dress and take them to a community hall for music and traditional dancing. They don’t put on a show – they make the tourists do the dancing! It was lots of fun and hilarious to see all these foreigners dressed up like locals. I’m sure the local people get a good laugh over it.

Lincoln and I were pretty tired, after our lack of sleep the night before, so we went “home” at 9:30 and went to bed. Our room was basic but comfortable, and there were lots of heavy blankets on the beds so we weren’t cold. We had our sleeping bag with us as well, but probably didn’t need it.

:: June 9 ::

We awoke this morning at 6:30 to get ready for breakfast at 7:00, which was a yummy pancake with jam. We met up with the rest of the group at the boat dock at 8:00 and bid farewell to Norma, thanking her for all her hospitality. Taquile Island was only a 30-minute boat ride away, but the traditions on this island were much different than on Amantani. The Taquile people like to keep themselves more segregated from the world, and don’t inter-marry between cultures.

We were dropped off at a dock on one side of the island and walked along a trail to get to the main town on the island. The walk had great views across the lake to Amantani, and we could also see the Isla del Sol from here. It was surprising to see how close we were to it after travelling so long after we left it. We certainly have seen a lot of Lake Titicaca in the past few days! The village and the main square were small. All the Taquile people (men and women) are weavers, and make many hats, belts, sweaters, purses, vests, etc. There was a cooperative selling their wares in the main square. Esteban gave us an explanation of their typical clothing, and it was very interesting to hear about how the men weave and wear different hats depending on whether they are married, single, dating, or looking for a woman. It certainly makes life easy for the women. After the explanation about their way of life, we had some time to wander around and buy stuff, as well as visit a photography exhibition in the mayor’s office. A project had handed out digital cameras to some of the local villagers and instructed them to take pictures of their lives. Some of the pictures were really good, and I took some pictures of their pictures because they were a good insight into the people’s lives.

After lunch at a local restaurant we headed back down a series of five hundred and thirty steps to get to the main dock where our boat was waiting for us. It was another three hours to get back to Puno, where we were transferred back to our hotel. On the tour we had made friends with a girl from Romania, Andreea, but she is now living in the States and is doing a PhD at Harvard. We also met Rikard, who is from Sweden. They both came back to our hotel with us, since they didn’t like the original one they were at very much. Rikard was leaving tonight to go to Cuzco and start an Inca Trail hike, and Andreea was staying one more day in Puno and they going to Cuzco, where we will likely run into her again.

We tried to find a vegetarian restaurant that was recommended by a girl on the tour, but we ended up going to place next door to it by mistake. It had good pizza, so we were happy. Andreea joined us for dinner, and we were happy she had found us since we were in the wrong restaurant! After dinner we checked our email and went back to the hotel, since we had an early morning bus to Cuzco.

Comments

[green @ hoteles cusco]

That is a very nice trip.
I am glad you found pleasure from it.

May my trip go like that.
I hope so.