Lake Titicaca

Greetings once again from Cusco!

Just got sent home from construction due to the rain so figured I´d update you all on the goings on here....
Just returned from a weekend away at Lake Titicaca, it was pretty incredible. Ten of the volunteers from my house all took the trip together, so there was a great crew of people. We took an overnight bus ride from Cusco to the city of Puno, arriving at 5:30 am, where we had 2 hours in a hotel to sleep, shower and eat breakfast. Turns out I´m a champion sleeper and slept through the entire bus ride, I was pretty proud of myself and more rested than I expected. From Puno we took a boat to the floating islands, a community called Uros consisting of like 70 families that created their own islands out of reeds. It was really interesting, they gave us a demonstration of how they constructed the islands using clumps of reed root as a base, and layers of dried reeds on top. They staked their islands into the bottom of the lake (about 16 meters deep), and from there they built their houses on top. I guess historically the inhabitants moved out there in order to hunt birds and fish more easily. Unfortunately the animal life has been depleted too much for them to depend on that, and the community currently lives on the lake so they don´t have to pay taxes to the government. Interesting approach...I wonder if Thoreau would have had more luck if he actually lived in Walden Pond? But now they obviously depend on tourism to survive, so it´s pretty exploited, but supposedly on some of the islands life continues as it did before. Either way, it was really interesting, and I got to eat a piece of reed which was cool.

That afternoon we headed to the island of Amantani, where we had lunch with our host families, including little 4 year old Roy, who gave us a quick Spanish lesson by pointing at pictures in his notebook, saying the word and then giggling intensely. Such a cute kid!! Three of the volunteers and I had a little room at their house, and they cooked us quinoa soup and a plate of potatoes with fried squeaky cheese (if you´ve had it before you´d know why we call it that, it is really a squeaky texture). We then played a game of soccer, locals versus gringos, and despite the altitude of over 3800 meters we actually held our own pretty well. I was a little disappointed as they made us play girls versus girls, so there were 6 female college grads from the states/Spain versus 6 locals, primarily girls wearing full traditional garb, including sandals, brightly colored skirts and head scarves...didn´t feel that evenly matched. But it was fun either way, I scored 2 goals which made me happy :) Following the game we hiked for an hour up to the Pachatata temple at 4200 meters - the hike was really tiring but it was rewarding with panoramic views of the Lake Titicaca at sunset, including the snow capped mountains of Bolivia across the lake. After the hike we had dinner (again of quinoa soup, followed by white rice and fried potatoes in egg). As soon as dinner was over our host mother threw us into traditional clothing (I´ll post pictures soon, but I don´t think I could quite pass as Peruvian...) and hustled us off to a party, where we learned traditional dance and drank Cusquena, the local beer. We were all pretty exhausted from the day so my friends and I didn´t dance long, but wandered off to look at the stars, so incredible with barely any light pollution!

I was fighting a cold all weekend which was a bit of a pain, but it was really only a problem at the night and in the morning (randomly woke up the following morning with one eye crusted shut? That was pleasant, especially with no running water to rinse it out. All weekend. Huzzah for baby wipes!) But was actually okay the following morning, from Amantani we took the boat to another island Taquile, where we hiked for 45 minutes up to a beautiful restaurant, where we got a brief history lesson and were then served (you guessed it!) quinoa soup, and omelette or trout with rice. Once again, quite delicious. From there we just took the boat back to Puno (I managed to punch through the mirror in the bathroom on the boat, don´t ask. Hand was okay but super embarassing and had to pay $10 to replace, oops!). Back in Puno we had 5 hours to waste, and managed to do so at the absolute worst restaurant in the world, Eccos. They didn´t have half the food or drink items offered on the menu, and pizza consisted of essentially a matza cracker with a ketchup type sauce and cheese, and quacamole was the portion of a shot with 5 chips served with it. Awful yet hilarious experience. Managed to sleep through the bus ride home, which was fortunate as I heard it was pretty much death defying, with the bus at various points going up on one axle as we rounded mountain bends. We managed to make it home an hour faster than the way there, kind of concenrning but everyone survived (Did I mention that when you get on the bus they take a quick picture of each passenger? I believe which is then used to identify bodies if the bus does happen to plummet off the cliff? Yep, scary).

Things in Cusco still continue to be great, I´m just doing construction this week and am really looking forward to my afternoons being free. Construction is just plastering the outside of an abode brick building, it´s pretty fun actually and much easier than when we did the attic dad, there´s no floor yet so we can be as messy or awful as we want and it´s not a problem!

Anywho, love you all lots, feel free to respond with the goings on at home!

-tNaZ