Lake Titicaca

Hi there. Lisa here (Kate is still not feeling great and it chlling out in her hotel room.) I thought I was being so good yesterday by writing in my journal on the way back from the islands we visited on Lake Titicaca so I would have something to refer to in this post, but I left my journal at the hotel, so I´ll attempt to summarize and fill in missing info later.

First, some facts. As most of us know from going to elementary schools in the US, Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world. 60% of the lake is in Peru and the other 40% is in Bolivia. The name translates into Titi meaning puma and caca meaning grey. The English translation obviously is a subject of more chuckles than the true meaning of the name. Our guide Carlos also told us that the 60% Peruvian part is the puma (titi) and the 40% Bolivian part is the caca (grey). I suspect he was just being nationalistic.

The first island we went to, about 15 minutes offshore, was one of the Uros floating islands. The inhabitants there were Uros and their language was the third national language after Spanish and Quecha. The name of the language is Aymara. The islands are made from reeds and walking around on them is really cool, totally squishy deep pile carpet. All of their homes, boats, etc are also made from the reeds. Since I left my journal at the hotel, perhaps Gary will add a comment on the nitty gritty of the construction of things there. Each island is inhabited by one or two extended families. It takes about a year to build the island and once completed, it lasts about 40 years. The Uros people have lived there for centuries, trying to remove themselves from other indigineous groups that were not so peaceful. Their average lifespan is about 100 to 110 years, attributed to the fact that they eat right, exercise naturally due to things they must do every day, and are stressed about little. Children go to primary school on one of the bigger floating islands and if they want to continue their education have to go to the mainland. We were there at about 9:00 in the morning and saw some traditional row boats full of children rowing themselves to school, or at least that is what we could come up with as an explanation. I wish I were able to post some of the pictures here now, but I´m going to give Kate the CD we made and hopefully she´ll put some on the blog when she gets back to Boston..

From there, we went on one of their totally cool reed constructed boats and floated over to another of the Uros islands. I would pay big money just to be allowed to be rowed around on that boat for a day (a week, a month, a year?) -- it was that incredibly comfortable. It was somewhat cool outside yesterday (it is winter here), but the sun was shining brightly and I couldn´t imagine a better way to spend some (or all?) of my time. Once we got to the next island, we walked around for a bit, and then went back on the little tour motor boat for a two-hour ride to Isla Taquile.

Unlike the floating islands, this is a real one and was much farther out on main part of the lake. The inhabitants here are Quechua and speak limited Spanish. Once we arrived, we were met with the challenge of ascending about 500 or so primitive ¨steps¨ to get to our destination. Along the way, we were accosted, in a positive way, by young girls wanting to sell us woven bracelets similar to friendship bracelets, but more intricate. The were one Sole, about 33 cents each. By the time I left the island, I was adorned with about 5 of them. With one group of three girls, I took their picture and then told them I would buy one bracelet from each, and the sly first girl sold me one, then surrepticiously went to the back of the line to try to get me to buy another one from her. Children will be children! Women on the island could be seen spinning yarn on hand spindles throughout the island. Boys and men though were the highlight for me! They can be spotted at all times knitting multicolor hats, gloves, etc. They have a pouch at their waists where they keep the ball of yarn. This then gets strung around their necks and they unlike some other people I know, are able to do two or three things at once -- knit, walk and sometimes talk. I was quite impressed and am trying to figure out how to do all of this and sign at the same time :-).

Once we got to the plaza on topof the island, there were about a hundred or so dancers and singers celebrating a holiday in traditional artesinal (sp?) style and dress. It was great to watch. We then spent some time on the perimeter of the plaza looking at some of the most exquisite weaving and knitting I´ve seen. After we proceeded to have lunch atop some building, and then made our way back to the boat around the other side of the island. While we had lunch, we were facing the snow-capped Cordillera Real mountain in Bolivia.On the way down we were met with more little salespeople, some sheep and cows and more beautiful scenery. Somehow descending the 500 or so steps was harder than ascending them, but we all made it back to the boat in one piece and relaxed, slept, wrote or chattered on the journey back to the mainland. Our only mishap happened when Gary wanted to go to sit on the top of the boat and his prized baseball style hat from the Galapagos Islands departed his head and went into the lake. All and it, it was an experience that I will never forget.

We´ll be here tonight and leave early tomorrow morning to drop Kate off at the local airport to fly to Lima and Boston. We will be heading up further northwest (Ariel thinks SW) to Arequipa and the Colca Canyon. We´ll be in touch then.

Hasta luego,
Lisa