Lake Titicaca Islands, part one: Islas Flotantes

Copacabana, Bolivia

For the past four hours at least we've had free entertainment in our hotel room on the third floor: for the end of the school year the different classes from the school across the road are celebrating with a folk dance festival. Thanks to our elevated position we can not only hear the music but watch the dancers in their colourful costumes. 

We arrived here after a short three hour bus ride from Puno earlier today. Eight kilometres before reaching Copacabana we crossed the border to Bolivia, which was the easiest and fastest border crossing we ever experienced in South America. Copacabana is on Lake Titicaca, just like Puno in Peru, but it is much smaller and very touristy: shoulder-to-shoulder shops and stands selling local handicrafts, many, many restaurants, including kiosks right on the beach serving - supposedly - the best trout. In spite of my love of fish I haven't yet dared to try, still a bit leery of 'street food' here in South America. 

We decided to stop here on our way to La Paz to explore yet another island: Isla del Sol, the biggest of the islands in Lake Titicaca. It will be interesting to see how it differs from the Peruvian islands we visited for two days from Puno. 

We boarded our motorboat with about twenty-five other people from different parts of the world early on Monday morning, accompanied by Pepe, our bi-lingual local guide. For the first half hour or so Pablo, our captain, steered the boat through the channel lined by reeds and sedges leading out of Puno bay before we hit open water. Lake Titicaca is indeed huge! 

After about an hour and a half we arrived at our first destination, the famous 'Islas Flotantes', 'Floating Islands' of Lake Titicaca with their inhabitants who still live their traditional lifestyle, fishing, creating crafts and trading. 

We moored at one of the islands and were greeted by the family group that lived on it. They speak Aymara, an indigenous language spoken throughout parts of Peru, Chile and Bolivia. The men work away for some of the time to supplement their income, so they are exposed to modern life in Puno, Cusco or Lima, but the women still largely stay on the islands. Some of the islands, like the one we visited, are very small and have just room enough for the few houses belonging to the family group, but others are big enough for a school or community centre shared by the families from the about seventy floating islands.

Oscar, the leader of this particular island, gave us a demonstration of how the islands are constructed. They have a life span of about thirty years, so they do need to be renewed from time to time. For that purpose, the men cut off clumps of the uros reeds growing in abundance in Puno bay. Not every variety of reed is usable: a thick layer of root material forms the base of the island, cut in pieces small enough to handle for the men. They are then pulled to the spot where the new island is going to be and lashed together with stakes and string. Ropes made from reeds were used for that purpose traditionally, but now they use plastic. Within a few months the roots of the plants are so intertwined that the base for a new island is secure.

Construction of a floating island: base, layers of uros, and two different types of houses

Next, the whole family – men, women and children – work together to spread layer upon layer of reeds crosswise on this base, which takes months to complete; they are cut by the men and brought back to the island. The layers must be continually renewed to maintain the base: every 15 days a new one is added because the island needs to stay dry, and the lower layers rot, of course. Finally, the houses can be constructed, also made with the uros that share their name with the people living here as well as the group of islands themselves. Traditionally the houses were cone-shaped, but, Oscar tells us, 'only the grandparents want houses like that anymore.' The younger people live in rectangular houses. Yet, they are very small and basic with one room for the whole family. The food is prepared outside in a clay oven; there is a high danger of fire, which would be desastrous, of course.

After Oscar finished his demonstration we were divided into small groups to visit families in their houses. Our family consisted of Eduardo and Emma and their three children. The older two were in school: every morning they are picked up by boat and travel for about an hour or an hour and a half to attend the school on one of the bigger islands. The only one at home was one-year-old Myriam who was quite sick with a bad cold; Eduardo was going to take her to the doctor in the afternoon. They were worried about pneumonia, which is a problem in the damp environment. When we stepped out again Emma had spread out the handicrafts she and Eduardo had made: Emma's knitted and embroidered garments and ceramics painted by Eduardo who had also made small model reed boats like the ones they use to navigate (though motor boats are now part of their 'fleet' as well). They sell these items to the tourists visiting their island, but also take them to the market in Puno.

Before we moved on we were treated to a short ride in one of the amazing boats, used for centuries by the Uros people to navigate Lake Titicaca.  They used to be made entirely of reeds, but only last about half a year. Recently the Uros have switched to fashioning the core of the boats from plastic bottles which has at least doubled the life span. Eduardo was our 'gondoliere', using a long stake to quietly move us around his island and the adjacent one.

It is hard to believe that people still live this way, without power and running water, without most amenities that make life easy for us. The tourist trade is bringing in at least some extra cash (we were asked to pay 10 PEN (about $4 Can.) per person, but fishing, catching birds and gathering water fowl eggs is the basis of their existence. For how long might the Uros be able to preserve this heritage? How long will the young men return to their islands, and the women be content not to be part of the world beyond? 

A Sunday exploring ruins, part 2: Saqsaywaman

After spending some time at Q'enco we crossed the highway and walked the short distance to the last of the Inca sites we were going to see that day. Saqsaywaman is situated about two kilometres from the central plaza of Cusco and, like Q'enco, was used as a ceremonial site. This, however, was meant not only for the nobility but for the common folk as well, and it is huge! 

Edwin pointed out how part of the grounds are used by the local people who gather here on weekends for picnics, to play soccer and have fun. We were fortunate to be given a different perspective than most tourists because Edwin took us in through the entrance the Inca would have used for big ceremonial gatherings. Coming up some stairs we soon stood in front of the entrance to a tunnel. Here, we had to wait for a group of people to come out before we, too, could enter. Edwin explained that, to the Inca, this tunnel was symbolic of the womb. People had to pass through its narrow passageway; coming out on the other side was like leaving the womb and being born. It was completely dark almost as soon as we had stepped in, and I, second in line after Edwin, had to ask him to stop for a moment because I suddenly felt really strange. 'Don't worry', he said,' just put your left hand on the wall and always keep to the left. It's only ten metres long.' After a moment I could continue slowly, his voice, reassuring, ahead. My palm glided along the wall, made smooth so many centuries ago with round hand-held rocks. I felt the wall curving to the left – but I could not see a thing! It was an amazing experience, and when we came out at the other side I understood how this really was like leaving the darkness of the womb. To me, the short journey through the darkness had felt like an eternity. Edwin told us later that, had we turned right instead of left, we would have entered a circular space that would have kept us walking around and around endlessly. I'm glad we didn't end up there!

We emerged in a big, flat, grassy area that would have been covered with a shallow layer of water at Inca times. This was the cleansing place everybody had to pass through after leaving the tunnel, before entering the ceremonial grounds proper. The water came from a spring above and was channeled down to the bath, but now the water was used elsewhere, and the cleansing pool was dry.

Next, Edwin led us to a strangely striped greenish rock that jutted out conspicuously. This, he told us, would have been surrounded by a retaining wall at Inca times because the Inca tried to protect rocks and mountains since they were sacred to them. It was so smooth that it is used as a slide for children and adults alike nowadays, and there was much laughter and shouting on this Sunday afternoon. Edwin told us that, as a kid, he used to come to Saqsaywaman with his friends or family almost every day to play hide and seek in the ruins and slide down the rock.

We rounded the rock and now stood high above the ceremonial grounds. A huge grassy area spread out below us, surrounded by enormous walls. They were much lower than they had been originally because not only the Spanish took what they needed for building Cusco, but the local people got their own building material here up to the 1930s when it was finally put under protection. 

 

Overlooking this enormous theatre we tried to imagine what it must have been like at these gatherings, with thousands of people assembled below, happily celebrating as their descendants are at festivals today. 

These walls, too, had niches, but there were not only a few but dozens of them here for the mummies to oversee the ceremonies. 

Edwin told us how, at other times, this place was used for the initiation rituals of adolescent boys. Once a year the twelve year-olds were gathered here for two weeks to go through their initiation phase. They were engaged in all kinds of skill building and testing exercises and had to give their best at everything the priests asked them to do. After they had gone through it all they were considered to be adults. 

 

This time was used as well to assign each boy his future job in society. The priests watched them for the entire time and assessed their abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and according to what they observed the boys became farmers or soldiers, craftsmen or labourers. One of the competitions was a race from the nearby hill to the plaza we now saw from above. The fastest boys were made runners, one of the most honourable jobs. Runners carried messages over huge distances with the help of a relay system where the next runner was warned of the approach of the last one with the sounding of a concha, a kind of horn made from a big sea shell.

We climbed down a steep flight of stairs, rebuilt, like so many other walls and steps, in recent years because the original stones were used in construction elsewhere. To clearly distinguish what is left from the original buildings and what has been reconstructed it was decided that the reconstruction has to be done with smaller rocks.

Walking towards the wall across the plaza we started to realize just how immense these incredibly exact shaped rocks really were. The tallest of them is eight metres high, but the biggest, though not as tall, is six metres deep and weighs between eighty and one hundred tons. How did the Inca manage to move rocks that big?! How did they manage to shape them so that they fit together as tightly and neatly as a puzzle? Standing beside these walls I once again was in awe. 

 

Edwin explained that the rocks had been quarried in the hills above the site and moved by hundreds – thousands? - of men pulling with ropes, round stones placed underneath to help make the task a bit easier. Trunks were used for the same purpose, but the Inca did not know the wheel, nor had they discovered iron. Thus they used hand-held round rocks – granite or the even harder hematite – to shape the rocks for the walls. One theory is that, to fill in missing pieces in a wall, they made a wooden frame that fit exactly in the gap, filled it with clay and, once dry, removed it. The rock was then carved right after the model and slid in. How exact they must have been in their work to accomplish that!

The inside corners, we saw, were saw-toothed, just one more means of proofing the walls against earthquakes. Such amazing architectural feats! So many of the colonial buildings were destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again by earthquakes through the centuries, yet these straight-edged walls have withstood them all, the sand stone walls here just like the granite walls in Machu Picchu. 

At the end of the two-hour tour we said good-bye to Edwin, thankful for this interesting insight into a culture that accomplished so much in so little time, without the use of modern tools, without a written language. What would this place, this area, look like had they been allowed to continue on? Would they, like so many other strong empires, have gradually declined, become decadent and weak? Would they have been swallowed up anyway? We will never know. 

 

Hiking up to Machu Picchu

November 23, 2013

El Tuco Hotel, Cusco

We returned to Cusco today, making the train and collectivo trip in reverse, and already yesterday's wonderful excursion into a distant past seems like a dream, fading into the mist that so often envelops the mystical place called Machu Picchu ('Old Mountain').

Yesterday morning we left our hostel shortly after five to hike up to Machu Picchu. A surprising amount of people were up and about at this early hour, vendors opening their shops, men and women jogging around the soccer field or on their way to work. We passed the bus stop on the way downhill: several busses were waiting already, and tourists were lined up to get in. We had decided to walk instead: we had all day, after all. 

We followed the road for about three kilometres, just early enough that only a few busses passed us: the gates open at six, and there is not much point in being there before. The road runs parallel to the river, its voice ever present, sometimes rising to a roar when its bed is narrowed even more by huge boulders. Fog was rising between the mountains, veiling the river in the distance. Bird voices sounded from trees and shrubbery, and butterflies hovered over blooming vines. It had rained during the night, and the road was still a bit muddy, but the temperature was pleasant.

Before crossing the river after about half an hour of walking we had to show our tickets and passports to a guard in a booth and were waved on. Soon after the road started climbing. Thankfully, we didn't have to share it with the busses much longer: soon an arrow pointed to the left, and we turned off the road to follow the stairway into the dense forest. 

Now the real climb began! For almost two kilometres we walked up the uneven stone steps through vegetation dripping with moisture. For me, it was paradise: ferns and mosses, vines and blooms and huge-leafed trees – this will be as much a part of my memories of Machu Picchu as the site itself. From time to time a gap in the vegetation allowed a view of the surrounding steep mountains, shreds of clouds drifting between them, rising, then descending again. With the high humidity and rising temperatures we were soon dripping as much as the trees beside us.

Once, a familiar flight pattern right beside me caught my eye: a hummingbird hovered briefly before landing on a branch only a couple of metres from us. It wasn't in the least bit concerned about our presence, and we realized it had landed on its nest. At first I thought the rhythmic up and down movement of its beak meant it was feeding its brood, but it soon became apparent that it was still busy constructing its nest. Fascinated, I watched it fly off, come back a short time later, and - invisible to my eyes - afix more material to the nest. 

 

Every once in awhile our path crossed the bus road, but for the most part we were totally immersed in green. Only the regular rumble of busses up the road reminded us of what would likely await us once we reached the top. We stopped at a small thatch-roofed shelter to eat a bun and some cheese and one of the delicious small bananas called 'oritos' in Ecuador, and not much later we emerged at the entrance to Machu Picchu Reserve where busses were diverging their loads. Already people were lined up to get inside, and once again we had to show our ticket and passport. 

First glimpse of terraces about three quarters up

And then it lay before us, shrouded in mist, surrounded by mountains, a place from another time: Machu Picchu.

From Cusco to Aguas Calientes

November 22, 2013

Cusibackpacker Hostel, Aguas Calientes

The sound of the Willkanuta River ('House of the Sun', further downstream called Urubamba = Sacred River) is a constant background music here in our room in the Cusibackpacker Hostel in Aguas Calientes, a sound almost like rain. From time to time the loud rumble of a train is added to the noise, the whistle echoing in the narrow valley. Trains run frequently during the day and evening here since they are the only way to reach this little town that is also called Machu Picchu Pueblo.

We are indeed very close to one of the highlights of this year's travels, the sacred Inka site of Machu Picchu, which we will visit tomorrow. I say 'highlight', but really, every day is filled with interesting experiences and encounters.

For the last three days we were in Cusco, at 3400m above sea level the highest city we have visited so far. We were a bit worried about altitude sickness, but aside from some initial fatigue and some shortness of breath we thankfully were spared the effects. We didn't over-exert ourselves, just walked the cobbled streets of the city, enjoying the hustle and bustle of everyday life in Peru, rested on a bench in the Plaza de Arma or some other, smaller plaza, and visited the Museo del Inka with its huge collection of Inca and pre-Inca artifacts.

Yesterday we went to the office of Peru Rail at the Plaza de Armas and bought tickets for the train ride from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes. Coco, our friendly and knowledgeable host at the El Tuco hotel, had suggested we should not take the train right from Cusco, but get on in Ollantaytambo. For the first leg of the journey he recommended taking a 'collectivo', a small bus, since it would be much cheaper that way. Peru Rail has a monopoly and makes good use of that. Trains are running frequently, starting at five in the morning to allow for an early start to Machu Picchu, with the last one leaving at 9 pm. Two types of trains are available, the luxury 'Vistadome', with a glass dome for viewing, as the name suggests, and the more modest 'Expedition', and prices also vary according to the time of day. We had decided to spend two nights in Aguas Calidas and start early in the morning from there, so we didn't need to leave before 1 pm and so our tickets cost $94 per person for the round trip.

We re-packed our backpack and left part of our luggage at the El Tuco to travel lighter: we are going to return there on Saturday. Only a few minutes from the hotel, a bit further down Av. Grau, is what I will call the 'collectivo area' for want of a better description. We had passed through several times on our way to and from the centre of Cusco and had been hailed every time by the employees of the small bus companies looking for passengers to fill their vans. The first time we hardly knew what was happening when we were bombarded with 'Urubamba, Urubamba? Ollantaytambo, Ollantaytambo?', one, two, three, five 'spotters' following us for a few steps. The vans leave as soon as they are full, starting at three in the morning. Tourists make up only a small portion of the business; most travellers are locals. 

We had inquired about the price with one of them yesterday afternoon, just to have an idea, and were told that it would cost ten soles (not quite four dollars), unless we wanted to take a 'taxi', a smaller car, in which case it would be fifteen, and Coco confirmed later that this was the going rate.

This morning we headed to the place where we had been quoted the price, intercepted, of course, by several other company spotters before, one of them asking 40 soles for a taxi. They really have no scruples taking advantage of naive foreigners, and of course it is very tempting to do so. Still shaking our heads we were immediately picked up by another guy who asked the customary ten soles for his collectivo. It took maybe fifteen minutes more, plus some effort from the about seven employees, until most of the van's twenty seats were filled and we could be on our way.

For quite a while the road led uphill through the outskirts of Cusco, brown hillsides crowded with houses that looked, for the most part, not as poor as many of the hovels we saw in Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador. Yesterday's rain had made the roads branching off the highway slick with mud, and it isn't hard to imagine how heavy rainfalls can create mud slides.

Once we had left Cusco behind, still climbing slowly, we entered an amazing fertile high plateau. Fields stretched as far as the eye could see towards the mountains in the background, the deep red-brown soil almost free of rocks. Corn and beans, potatoes and what I assume to be quinoa in different stages of growth were interspersed with freshly ploughed or tilled fields. Teams of oxen were hitched to ploughs, less often a tractor was doing the work, and the fair sized farm houses, mostly built with bricks of the same beautiful dark brown as the fields, looked well kept. Donkeys grazed in the ditches, oxen and cows were tethered by their horns, pigs by their hind legs. Women in traditional dress sat at the edge of the field herding sheep, women and men were working in the fields – it was a pastoral scene. With everything that is growing here it is really hard to imagine that this is almost 4000 m above sea level.

Sunshine on the way back to Cusco

 

For the second part of the 1 3/4 hour trip the road descended towards Ollantaytambo, and by the time we reached this nice looking city, 'only' at about 2,800m above sea level, the vegetation had changed. Now, there were yellow-blooming cacti and agave as well, and the flowers looked more tropical. We had about two hours to walk around a bit before the departure of our train, and decided to check out if it would be worthwhile to visit the Inca ruins at the edge of town. A cobbled street leads uphill from the railway station along the Urubamba river, and after passing through the obligatory accumulation of stands selling crafts and knick-knacks we were at the foot of the ruins. Most certainly it would be interesting to visit them, but there is no single entry ticket available to do so and for us it would be too complicated to visit the other widely scattered sites.

View of the ruins at Ollantaytambo

Half an hour before the departure of the train the crowds started to line up in the light rain: Peruvian school classes and loads of tourists were admitted single file through the gate. At least three times the tickets were checked until we could finally enter our railcar. This was by no means a rickety affair but quite luxurious, with comfortable leather seats and big windows both along the sides and on top.

The interior of the 'Expedition' rail car

The one-and-a-half hour ride led through a magnificent landscape, turning more and more into rainforest with bromeliads populating huge trees, lianas dangling from rugged cliffs along the sides, the raging river brown from the soil it picked up along the way. Steep mountains rose to both sides, veiled in mist and clouds, their peaks hardly visible from where we sat. The train swayed from side to side, descending steadily towards its final destination. After about half an hour crew members came through to serve hot and cold drinks and cup cakes, and after a short break again to sell books and memorabilia. They were met with much more enthusiasm the first time around. One crew member stood in the open rear door of the car for the entire trip, stepping inside only when a tunnel approached. I'm not quite sure what his job was, but he obviously enjoyed being admired by the passengers, sharing stories of his experiences.

We arrived in Aguas Calientes at about three in the afternoon, rain still falling steadily, but not very heavy, and headed uphill to where a helpful policeman had pointed out the Cusibackpacker hostel I had found online. With a trainful of people – just one of several today – Johann had become a bit concerned that we might not find a room easily after all while I trusted the opinion of Coco's employee who had told me that it would not be a problem now, in the off-season. Indeed it wasn't; we found a comfortable room and – Eureka! - even have hot water again, something supposedly not to be taken for granted in Peru.

Arrival in Aguas Calientes

In just a few hours we will be on the final leg of the journey to Machu Picchu. 

A long trip

November 20, 2013

El Tuco Hotel, Cusco

It is 8 in the morning, and ever since I first awoke at five the din of traffic has been increasing. So much of the communication between drivers in South America consists of using the horn: short little warnings to pedestrians standing close to the road, ready to cross, invitations to other drivers to slip into a gap – or warning to keep them in their lane. All of this horn honking is mixed with engine noise, voices shouting to each other, brakes screeching, someone banging on metal, and, strangely, the sound of a flute drifting by for a moment. We are back in South America, there is no doubt!

It was a long journey to get here, and I'm still a bit mixed up with my timing. Our flight to Toronto left from Edmonton at eight on Monday morning, which meant leaving for the airport at five since road conditions were still not perfect. For once, there was no delay, either in Edmonton or Toronto, and we landed in Lima at midnight, even a bit ahead of schedule so that we had to wait for a gate. The immigration procedures went smoothly, and nobody objected to anything in our luggage at customs. All we had to do now was wait ...

We weren't much interested in exploring Lima at this stage and had decided to leave for Cusco right from the airport. Our flight with Star Peru, a small local airline, was due to leave at six-thirty on Tuesday morning, and with check-in two hours earlier we weren't much concerned about the few hours wait in between. Shortly before we left on our trip, however, we got an email from Star Peru: that flight had been cancelled, and we were now due to leave at 8:30 instead. What's a couple of hours more, we thought; that, too, shall pass.

In retrospect it would have been wise to book a hotel for those few hours in between, if only to get off our feet: waiting at an airport for eight hours is not very conducive to rest. We caught short naps, head rested on arms on a table, walked back and forth along the airport building and the parking lot several times in the pleasantly warm, humid night air, had a coffee, a bite to eat, and finally were on the last leg of the trip. 

We boarded the older plane with room for about a hundred people, most of them Peruvian, and were treated to not only non-alcoholic drinks, but even a bun and a muffin for the one-hour flight, which was more service than we received on the four-hour flight from Edmonton to Toronto. The weather was clear, and we had an excellent view of the Andes from our window seat, even though we sat on the 'wrong' (the right) side of the plane. The left side would have allowed even more awesome vistas of this enormous mountain range with its ice-capped peaks. A friendly airline employee waved us over for some especially spectacular scenery. For the first while after we left Lima there was hardly any habitation, but later we saw villages perched, seemingly, on mountain tops, and the landscape greened up a little from the forbidding barrenness we passed over in the beginning. 

The descent was quick, the plane nosing its way through the mountains into the valley, with a smooth landing. Travel along the runway reminded us a bit of the bus driving we had experienced in other South American countries: the pilot was in a hurry to get from and to the gate, it seemed, and didn't even slow down much to take the curves.

I had arranged a pick up at the airport, and true to his promise Coco, the hotel owner, awaited us, waving a sign with 'Susanne Von'. :)  We got into a waiting taxi, and within a few minutes arrived at the hotel 'El Tuco' ('The Owl'), about six blocks away from the center of Cusco. We had chosen this hotel mostly because of its great reviews by other travellers: it was supposed to be clean, far enough removed from the party scene closer to downtown, safe and with friendly, English speaking service. We found all of that confirmed. The room is simple, but has all we need, and after many hours of sleep through yesterday evening and tonight, fortified by a good breakfast, we will soon be ready to see what more Cusco has to offer. Our walk yesterday led us through part of the historic downtown core with its interesting buildings and inviting 'Plaza de Armas'. 

A small plaza not far from the town centre