Silencio - Silence

 

If Ica with its incredible jumble of honking taxis and mototaxis was the culmination of noise and chaos, the afternoon I spent at Santa Catalina monastery in Arequipa was the exact opposite.

 

Arequipa itself, with its beautiful colonial buildings, cobbled streets, big trees and relaxed atmosphere was very appealing to us, and our lodgings at the 'Casa de Ana' in the quiet neighbourhood of Yanahuara were at least in part responsible for this. Ana herself, our hostess, was very helpful with advice where to go and what to see in and around the city. She was the one who insisted that if we were to look at only one thing in Arequipa it should be the Santa Catalina monastery, 'a city within the city'. We had explored the centre of town – its Plaza de Armas with too many pidgeons and the surrounding streets and buildings – earlier on Monday, and Johann didn't want to spend time looking at a monastery that covered two city blocks - (five acres!). Arequipa is a reasonably safe place to walk, and once we had consulted the map so that I would find my way home to Casa de Ana, about two kilometres from the city centre, he headed back to our lodgings and I entered the gates of Santa Catalina.

I had read only the most basic information about it, but could have easily received a tour (free after paying the admission fee of about $13) from one of the guides waiting on a bench just beyond the gate. There is a lot of history contained in these walls, many artifacts and wall paintings are waiting to be discovered – yet it didn't feel like the right thing to do on this sunny afternoon. I decided to walk alone.

I was immediately stunned by the bold colours: the stark white and soft grey I had expected were set off by walls in a red somewhere between vermilion and scarlet, depending on the light, and azure. Trees graced the flagged inner courtyards: ficus varieties and orange trees, and well-placed potted plants added to the feeling that this was a place where I could walk in quiet contemplation. 

I entered through the gate so aptly bearing the inscription 'Silencio' – Silence. Discreet arrows pointed out the path I was supposed to take, leading me from the novices cloister to those of the ordained nuns. It was like walking through an enchanted world: through arched doorways I stepped into cells of varying size and decor, some very simple, others more elaborate than I would have expected from a nunnery.

Signs informed about the rooms and their uses and special features. I read that, at the time the monastery was built (late sixteenth century) it was the custom for wealthy families to send their second daughter to a monastery. They were set up fitting their social position, were expected to pay a considerable amount of money – a dowry, really - to the church for this privilege, and their life within the walls of Santa Catalina would have been not so different in many ways than it would have been in the outside world. This explained the beautiful furniture, expensive chinaware, exquisite embroidery that could be found in some of the cells.

Yet, the nuns no longer inhabiting these quarters, the feeling remained for me that this was, more than anything, a place of meditation. Sacred music from the different centuries this monastery had been in use was played unobtrusively over the sound system, enhancing the peaceful atmosphere.

The labyrinth of little arched walkways, steps leading to an upper floor that was, for the most part, no longer there because one or the other earthquake had destroyed it, so, really, led nowhere, the still present scent of fire in the blackened hearths, rooms cleverly designed that natural light could enter through well-placed windows and skylights, the humming of bees, the twitter of birds, the sound of water from a fountain, and, above all, the absence of people – all that added up to make this one of the most memorable experiences of this journey for me.

Strangely – or maybe not so strangely at all – what I experienced in Machu Picchu and here was not so very different: not only were some of the architectural elements the same: niches for placing sacred objects; water lines connecting parts of the structure, providing water to different areas; the shape of the windows; the skylights providing extra, if indirect, light, but, more than anything, what they shared was the sensation that this was sacred space. 

From Arequipa to Ica: another long bus ride

December 13, 2013

Ica, Peru

The closest of the barking dogs has quit for now, but in the distance the constant yapping continues. Other sounds drift in through the window: a crying baby, childrens' voices, music from a car stereo, traffic noise. All that belongs to any town, and the fact that I can sit here at ten pm by the open window (and without bugs!) makes me as happy as ducking under a bougainvillea bush covered in purple blossoms on the way downtown earlier today.

The fact remains, however, that this town is extremely noisy for some reason and that it seems to have few redeeming qualities beyond the ones I mentioned to make up for its lack of apparent beauty. I have never seen – or rather heard – car horns used with more insistence, nor impertinence. It seems that they are not only a means of aiding the flow of traffic but are engaged just because they are there. A huge fleet of taxis and tuk-tuks – motorcycle-driven little three-wheeler taxis – fills the streets, and horns are used, it seems, to pick up passengers, alert them that it's time to get off, as well as announce every turning of a corner, every close encounter with another vehicle – and there are many! 

Maybe this - seen in Lima's 'Miraflores' neighbourhood later - would have helped in Ica?

After braving this din twice today to get downtown to do errands (partly in vain, to boot) we asked ourselves, 'whatever made us stop here, of all places?'

Well, beyond things like these

 

and the amazing 'Museo Regional de Inca' with its great collection of artifacts from the two main pre-Inca cultures, the Nasca and the Paranaca, it was the fact that we wanted to break up the long bus ride from Arequipa to Lima. For some reason the travel agent was adamant that we should not sleep in Nasca, the stop before Ica, about three hours closer to Arequipa, so there seemed to be little choice.

Most people who stop here in Ica go to the nearby Laguna Huacachina, an oasis surrounded by huge sand dunes where sand boarding and riding dune buggies are popular activities, but we were just looking for a place to rest: the bus ride from beautiful Arequipa to Lima takes more than sixteen hours, and we felt twelve were quite enough to do in one stretch. 

We had booked the two front seats on the upper level of an 'Oltursa' bus, a company mostly geared towards tourist travel. It's nice to have the extra comfort - wider seats that recline to almost horizontal position, some extra leg room - on these long trips, and these seats at the very front afford the best view possible, of course. We had been in that position before, in a much less luxurious bus going from Bogota to Quito, and at that time we realized that having the better view can also mean being more terrified at the driving style of the bus driver. We didn't expect anything like that here, however. 

It turned out that we were unprepared for the ride in other ways. Even though we had been in Arequipa for a few days and left it in between to visit the Colca Valley and Colca Canyon, even though we had read that people jokingly say that when the moon separated from Earth it forgot to take Arequipa, we couldn't quite imagine the landscape we would be driving through. 

We left Arequipa with its shady parks and white colonial buildings, a city as cool and orderly as Ica is noisy and chaotic, early on Thursday morning. From an altitude of 2,325m we would drop to only 400m in Ica.

The road climbed and dipped through rocky terrain, bare of growth for the most part except where a trickle of water encouraged the most tenacious grasses and small plants. After a while the rocks were joined by vast areas of sand, dunes that stretched to the distant mountains to our right and down towards the Pacific ocean which we reached about two hours after we left Arequipa. 

The presence of the ocean didn't mean that it got any greener, however: miles and miles of beautiful sandy beaches stretched without a single tree, dotted by little huts woven from reeds or grass from time to time, though these, too, seemed largely abandoned. People were gathering sea weed and had spread it out to dry, and sometimes we saw them load it onto a truck. Here and there a fleet of fishing boats - sometimes quite large vessels - were moored in a bay. Still, for our eyes the landscape seemed desolate for the most part.

This changed dramatically when a river tried to make its way toward the ocean from the Andes. Suddenly a valley was lush and green, crops like corn, rice, melons, pumpkins and even cotton grew in abundance, olive and citrus trees softened the harshness of the surrounding steep hills. Here, little towns flourished and people carried on as in so many other little towns. 

Dunes with retaining walls

Soon, however, there was again only rock and the paranaca wind whipping across the high planes, rippling and sculpting the sand into dunes, a thin haze slightly veiling the road ahead, made up not of moisture but of sand. 

It was a magnificent landscape we traveled through, a landscape hard to reconcile with the Peru we had seen already, the deep blue sky as relentless as the surface it spanned. The average rainfall here is 25 mm - one inch spread out over the whole year. 

The sun was setting already when once again agricultural activity became apparent, the valley widening, trees, even large trees, appearing along the road side: we had reached the Ica region, Peru's only wine growing area, home to Pisco, the town famous for the grape brandy with the same name. By the time we arrived at the bus terminal in Ica it was completely dark. 

                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is Saturday morning now, and we'll be on our way to Lima later today, a little more than four hours from here by bus. Soon it will be time to return to winter - hard to believe at the moment!

Bolivian Pampas, part three: Life on a river, the second and third day

A squirrel monkey on the clothes line

The chorus of howler monkeys woke us up before dawn the next day. It sounded as if they were making a point of stopping at one lodge after the other, the noise swelling, then fading in the distance. They stayed invisible for the most part, however. Instead, we found capuchin and squirrel monkeys playing in the trees beside the wooden walkway, unconcerned with our presence, but not getting close enough for contact. We watched them for a while before Victor called us for breakfast. Irma had gone out of her way to bake pancakes and different scones, and oranges, papaya and bananas rounded out the meal.

This was going to be a long day with lots of opportunity to experience the local flora and fauna. The first part of the morning was dedicated to a walk across the pampas – not so different than walking through a swampy area at home after the snow melt, feeling for firm ground beneath our rubber boot-clad feet – to an 'island' about half a kilometre away. Groups of people from other lodges were doing the same thing, spread out over a fair distance. This was going to be a kind of group activity where we would all work together to go looking for snakes. Now, in wet season, this is not such an easy undertaking since the snakes move much faster in the water than on dry land, and of course there was no guarantee that we would spot a python, fake cobra or anaconda. The guides stayed in touch via cell phone to alert each other should one of the groups spot a snake.
It was hard to imagine that any snake would hold still to be viewed with so many sets of feet shaking the ground, but we weren't so sure anyway if we really wanted to find one, even if Victor declared they were neither poisonous nor in any other way dangerous to us. 
White egrets and jaribu storks stalked around in the grasslands, keeping their distance from the human intruders. And then, just when we had reached the slightly elevated and thus dry island, Victor got his call: a small anaconda had been found in a hollow tree. The guides shone a flashlight into the cave, and one by one we had a peek at the tightly coiled serpent. 

In the afternoon Victor took us upstream for an opportunity to 'swim with the dolphins'. His ability to find his way on the river with its myriad arms running through the maze of trees and reed was amazing. Idly, we contemplated what would happen to us if we were left alone here – all we could hope for was to find the main current and be carried back to the lodge area. None of us had any idea where we were, or even how far the water extended. A few times Victor took shortcuts through narrow channels, warning us to crouch to avoid low branches or thorny vines, at other times he cut through reeds and dense stands of high leafy plants with large morning-glory blossoms. 

 
Finally we had reached a quiet, lagoon-like part of the river. This, he told us, was where we would go swimming. It took only a few minutes before we could hear the spouting of the first dolphin, and soon there were three or four playing around the boat. These dolphins don't jump like salt water dolphins, and we only got to see backs and bellies and fins when they turned over. Johann, José Luis and André went in right away, but I was reluctant to join them, aware of my tendency to panic in open water. It was hard to resist the opportunity to cool off on this hot day, however, and the water was nice and warm, so I finally relented. As Johann had told me: I would have regretted it if I hadn't.

The dolphins kept their distance, surfacing from time to time around the perimeter of the lagoon. It was a privilege to watch them in their natural habitat, and we were not disappointed that they hadn't come closer to check out these strange visitors.

Swimming with(out?) the dolphins

We were going to stop at the 'sunset bar' – no more than a wooden shack with a spacious grassy area, a volleyball net and a few benches – for a cold beer around sunset, and since there was some time left Victor took us further upriver to an area we hadn't visited before. 

This was the dominion of the herons and egrets: dozens of these beautiful birds, their white plumage shot through by the rays of the late afternoon sun, were sitting on trees along the shoreline. When we came closer they lifted up with slow, measured wing beat, a flock of ethereal beings like otherworldly messengers flying ahead of us before settling down around the next bend. Trees and bushes took on a warm glow in the dwindling light, and again I felt totally at peace. 

Morning came early on our last day: we were going to watch the sunrise from a suitable viewpoint on the river and left at a quarter past five. Again the strange, hollow voices of the howler monkeys sounded in the quiet of the early morning, and birds were waking up slowly. Victor brought the boat into position in a little bay, and one by one we heard the boats from the other lodges do the same thing.
We had stopped along the bush, close to a carpet of water plants where a Happy Bird was sitting on its nest without stirring. It got its name because of the call it makes when disturbed, which resembles the sound of laughter. It is an inconspicuous brown bird of maybe the size of a partridge when it is sitting, but once it spreads its wings a wide, pale yellow band along the outer edge of the wings becomes visible, and it seems much bigger. When the first rays of the rising sun spread out over the water the Happy Bird started to stir as well, just as Victor had predicted. 

Waiting for the sunrise

 

 

 And there it was: the start to another beautiful day.

We would be leaving the pampas in a few hours, but the impressions of this paradise will stay with me for a long time.

Bolivian Pampas, part two: Life on a river, the first day

We had arrived at the Yacuma river. This was to be the roadway on which our travelling would take place in the next two days.

Several long canoes were waiting to be loaded: all the different tour operators started out from here to reach their lodges about two and a half hours upriver. Our boat, the 'Dolphin II', was equipped with four metal folding chairs bolted to the side of the canoe, and once our luggage and the supplies had been stowed Victor, our guide, started the engine and nosed the boat out into the current.

It is rainy season now, and the river, only about a meter high during dry season, according to Victor, has already risen seven or eight metres and has turned into a massive waterway with many arms. It was hard to imagine that we were manoeuvring between tree tops, even harder to imagine what this river might look like when it is low. Victor warned us that our olfactory senses might be insulted: rotting vegetation has turned the water dark brown and murky, and the strong scent of decay filled our nostrils. We soon got used to it, however, especially since our other senses were immediately fully engaged as well.

We hadn't even really gained speed yet when Victor pointed to a spot in the middle of the river that seemed to be churning with some movement. A moment later a greyish-pink back appeared briefly, followed by another one: the pink river dolphins unique to the Amazon basin. They are the only freshwater dolphins in the world, and we would encounter them time and again in the next couple of days.

Cormorants

Slowly we made our way upriver, stopping from time to time when Victor wanted to show us something along the way: the long, intricately woven basket-like nests of fly catchers, black vultures surveying their surroundings from high up in a tree, a whole family of black cormorants sitting side by side on a branch, different herons, white egrets, a Solitary eagle, cara-caras (a type of falcon) ... River turtles were sunning themselves on logs in the water, almost always two together, the one in the back resting its neck on the shell of the front one. Victor brought the boat alongside them and turned off the engine, but by the time we had aimed our cameras they had usually slipped into the water.

River turtles

Around four in the afternoon we passed the first of the lodges strung out along the shoreline, far enough apart that they were out of sight of each other. Soon Victor swung around and parked our canoe at the dock of the 'Dolphin Tour' lodge. We had arrived at our temporary home.

Victor introduced us to Señora Irma, the cook, who soon appeared with a plate of cookies and a jar of juice, and showed us around. Wooden walkways, like the lodge and Irma's house on stilts, connected the different buildings. The river spilled over into the bush behind the lodge, the water level much lower there, but high enough for Pepe, the three-and-a-half metre long black caiman who lives under the porch behind the kitchen. Only the upper half of his head and the spiked tail were visible above the surface of the water. His eyes were closed, and his head looked like a relief carved from stone. We were warned not to get too close, however, and not to feed him. While he lives in close proximity to the lodge he is not tamed and has chosen this spot himself, free to leave when he feels like it. 

Two kinds of caimans live in the river, the bigger black caiman that can reach up to nine metres in length when fully grown, and the smaller white or spectacle caiman, named for its bulging eyes. We saw a few of them close to the lodge as well, though none as permanently installed as Pepe seemed to be. The shape of the eyes and the lack of spikes on head and tail in the white caiman make it quite easy to distinguish the two. 

The walkway continued through the swampy area past Irma's house and ended at the 'mirador', a two-story building with a screened-in lower part and a viewing area on top. From here, we had an unimpeded view of the wide expanse of pampas stretching green and lush into the distance. 'All that's missing are the elephants', said André, and indeed it resembles the African savanna. Here, all we saw were birds, and the occasional sleek back of a dolphin in the river. We watched as the sun slowly slipped lower and finally sank behind the horizon shortly before six, the wide sky aglow in gold and bronze. Still it was very warm, and mosquitoes were becoming a bother with increasing darkness.

Victor, who had left us to our own devices for the last part of the afternoon, picked us up after nightfall for a boat ride in the dark: we were going to look for 'caiman eyes' with our flashlights.

The water gurgled softly under the keel, and the sky was a sea of light. This darkness, unspoiled by human attempt to ban it with artificial light, was an incredible backdrop for the fine line of the first sliver of moon just past new, surrounded by a carpet of stars. The cruce del sur – the southern cross – pointed the way south, and two faint white clouds hung low in the sky: the Magellanic clouds, galaxies of the southern hemisphere. I remembered my excitement when I first saw them in Argentina during our first visit to South America.

Our flashlights caught the reflection of a caiman's eye here and there, but to me it was the night itself that will make this evening excursion memorable, the feeling of magic when Victor turned off the engine and we glided silently on the quiet waters in this tropical night, billions of insects filling the immense space with their song, as incredible as the dome of light spanned above.

The generator that had been running since about seven, providing light and also the opportunity to charge any batteries we might need, was turned off at nine, and the lodge was plunged in the semi-darkness of a tropical night. We arranged our mosquito nets and did what people without electricity have done for eons: we went to sleep, filled with the impressions of this long day.

 

Bolivian Pampas, part one: Getting there

 

Saturday, December 7

Hostal Sol Andina, La Paz 

Here I am, sitting on a bed with two thick and heavy lama wool blankets, contemplating if I should slide my feet in to warm them up when this morning just after sunrise rivulets of perspiration were already running down my back on my way to the 'Amaszonas' airline office in downtown Rurrenabaque.

We left La Paz only four days ago, but it felt like a small eternity when we returned this morning, so far removed from the by now familiar highland scenery had we been. We had found out about the Pampas tours from the travel agent conveniently housed in the lobby of our hostel and had made a quick decision to choose this as one of our Bolivia experiences.

On Tuesday evening we boarded the small plane from Air Amaszonas at 4,060m above sea level at the La Paz airport, and forty-five minutes later we touched down at an altitude of 229 m in Rurrenabaque. To reach this small town northeast of La Paz by road takes twenty-four hours on difficult roads winding through mountains and, later, jungle. Most people prefer to use one of the small aircraft of Air Amaszonas or Tam that come in three times a day. Pleasant as this option is, it, too, is not without challenges: often enough flights are cancelled because of poor visibility. There was no problem for us, however, and we soon enough stepped out into the sweltering heat of the lowlands.

Touching down in Rurrenabaque

The airport - all of it

Airport shuttle

The road to town

 To our surprise we were greeted by a representative of 'Dolphin Tours', and after the incredibly unorganized unloading of the luggage of this small group of passengers at the smallest airport I have ever seen we headed into Rurre, as it is called locally, and were delivered to our hostel.

The next morning we shouldered our packs and walked the few blocks to Dolphin Tour's office. It seems there are hundreds of motorbikes in this town of about 14,000 in the middle of nowhere. Men, women, teenage girls and boys, families of four squeezed together, a husband with his stately wife perched sideways behind him on the seat – there is a constant up and down of motorcycles in the streets, honking, swerving around obstacles and pedestrians. Shoulder to shoulder stand the little stores, restaurants, and bars, in the main street for tourists, one street removed mostly for the locals. Mango trees, heavily laden with still-green fruit, give welcome shade, and most of life takes place in front of houses and shops. 

During the night it becomes quiet for a while, but by sunrise life picks up again, albeit at a more leasurely pace than in the bigger (and cooler) centres. 

 

We had no clear idea what expected us in these next three days, only the broad outlay of information we got from the travel agent and our brochure, so all we knew was that we'd spend three days in the pampas, the extensive grasslands, and that we'd be housed in a lodge along the river Yacuma, a tributary of the Río Beni flowing through Rurrenabaque.

There is one tour operator beside the next along that stretch of street, and everywhere tourists were waiting to be picked up for their sojourn into the wetlands. Nearly all of them were backpacker type young people, hardly anyone seemed to be much over thirty – why, I have no idea. Interestingly, however, the only two people joining us at Dolphin didn't fit that category: André from Belgium was in his mid seventies, and José Luis from Spain in his early fifties – we could easily have been everybody else`s parents. 

Shortly after nine Joaquin, our driver, was ready to leave. Our bags and some supplies meant for the lodge were loaded into a white Toyota four-wheel drive seven-seater, and we were headed north along the bumpy road leading out to the airport. Soon after we passed it the semi-paved road abandoned all pretense of being anything but a gravel road, and not a very good one to boot. 

The sun was shining now, but it had rained heavily the few preceding days and in some spots deep ruts were still filled with water. With exceptional skill Joaquin negotiated big rocks and deep holes, changing lanes as necessary, getting the speed up to eighty kilometres per hour for short stretches before encountering yet another area where manoeuvering was difficult. Trucks, buses, motorcycles and a few vehicles like ours, loaded with tourists headed for adventure, shared the road with white, grey and brown Brahma cows on their way to a different pasture, herded by cowboys on small, tough horses. Once we passed a team of big oxen hitched to a wagon.

We passed the small town of Reyes, then stopped for a short break at a shack/restaurant in the middle of nowhere, the half-way point of our car ride. After about two-and-a-half hours we had a pre-ordered lunch in Santa Rosa, a neat looking town of maybe five thousand people with businesses and paved streets, and only ten minutes from there our road travel came to an end. It was time to say goodbye to Joaquin and change the means of transportation.

Lake Titicaca Islands, part 4: Isla del Sol

Tuesday morning in La Paz

We haven't done this city much justice yet, beyond the nearby bustling streets with street vendors and chaotic traffic, and yet we are on our way out again. In a few hours we will fly to the small town of Rurrenabaque in the Amazon basin to see a very different part of Bolivia. We'll be spending three days and two nights exploring the rain forest and the Pampas.

While we are waiting for the taxi to take us to the airport in the lobby of our hostel I will attempt to finish reporting on the last of the Titicaca island experiences, the only one we visited on the Bolivian side. 

Early on Saturday morning we boarded a boat at the Copacabana harbour that was to take us to Isla del Sol, the legendary birthplace of the Inca people. This was no guided tour but transport used by visitors and islanders alike, and as soon as all the seats were taken – inside and also on two metal benches up on the roof – we headed out of the harbour. We had found seats in the very front of the boat and shared space with two indigenous women with voluminous bags. 'You never know what these bags might contain', remarked a fellow passenger, and indeed – soon two little black-haired heads emerged. The baby bundles were deposited on the seats, and the mothers engaged in conversation. Older children played on the floor, and I soon found myself holding the two chubby brown hands of a little girl doing 'exercises' with her while she counted from one to three.

The waves were higher than during our boat ride on the Peruvian side. There, we didn't encounter the full impact of the huge body of open water since we had for the most part stayed within the protection of Puno Bay.

The captain mostly hugged the shoreline with its big algae-covered rocks, but still the ride was pretty rough. Once, he sped up and passed a boat of similar size, only to approach the dock at Yumani, the southern port of Isla del Sol, immediately after. He obviously wanted to be the first to get rid of the passengers getting off at this point.

Most of us, however, stayed on board for another half hour or so when we docked at Challapampa on the north end. There was one more departure for Copacabana that afternoon, and just going for half a day is definitely an option. We, however, had decided to find a place to stay overnight on the island. We hadn't made a reservation anywhere ahead of time, since now, in low season, it is no problem to find accommodation. We wanted to hike from the north to the south end of Isla del Sol, following the old Inca road running along the spine of the island for about 8.5 km. Like on the other islands we visited there is no motor vehicle traffic on Isla del Sol.

The little community at this end of the island was not very inviting and looked a bit run-down. Guides – as far as we could tell all Spanish speaking – approached the disembarking passengers, and we quickly left all of that behind.

We walked along the beautiful white sand beach for a little while, admiring a few pigs picturesquely dotting the shoreline, before the path became rocky and started to climb steadily uphill through the terraced landscape. It felt like hard work in the hot noon sun at this altitude.

After about half an hour we had reached the first outlook, allowing us to survey the bay from which we had just climbed up and, trying to follow the winding path down – and up – hill with our eyes, we tried to figure out where we'd have to go next. There was a display case with a broken glass window showing points of interest along the road, but it was a bit vague, and we didn't really feel like walking down somewhere if we didn't have to because it meant climbing up again, too.

Yet, the rocky path seemed to lead down towards the lake shore on the other side of this ridge, and we decided to just follow it. Not long, and we passed the first of the sites, the so-called 'Mesa del Inca', a stone altar and some smaller blocks arranged around it. Today's offering were handicrafts which an islander had spread out for the tourists, weighed down by rocks so that they didn't blow away. We hiked down further and now found ourselves facing one of the truly interesting Inca sites: the Chincana labyrinth. 

Meanwhile it is Wednesday morning, and we are in the steaming heat of Rurrenabaque. Soon we'll be on our way to the pampas. 

Since I'm afraid I'm running out of time, I'll quote from www.boliviatravelsite.com here:

About 300 meters southwest of Titikala (Roca Sagrada or Sacred Rock) is an elaborate Inca ruin called the Chincana (the Labyrinth).
Also named the Palacio del Inca, or El Laberinto, or labyrinth, these ruins on the top of Isla del Sol form the complex of the Titicaca, or sacred rock.
The Chincana ruins were worshipped as the birthplace of the first Incas: Manco Kapac and Mama Okllo, son and daughter of Viracocha. . They believed that the sun was born here from behind a large rock to the east, shaped like a crouching puma called Titi Khar�ka (Rock of the Puma) hence the lake's name.
Chincana Labyrinth walls were once covered with mud plaster and had been painted in various colors. It contains trapezoidal doors and niches indicative of Inca architecture.
Many rooms within the Chincana are connected by twisting passageways, giving a maze-like feeling to this complex, that is therefore called Laberinto Chincana. Apparently it housed the women who cared for the shrine at Titikala.

From here, the road – its course outlined by low walls on either side – climbed steadily uphill. Strong wind buffetted us, making the hot sun more bearable, but shade was hard to come by.We had started at about 3,800m above sea level at the lake, and at its highest point the Inca road reaches 4,060m. It took a lot of up and down until we had finally reached it. Time and again we turned a corner and had yet another amazing view of the landscape below. The thought that this road had been built and used by the Inca people is strange and exciting. 

It was mid-afternoon when we started the downward slope. Now, eucalyptus groves along the flanks of the hill softened the impression of the dry, rocky landscape a little. Suddenly the faint sound of pipes and drums drifted up from somewhere far below. It seemed to slowly come closer, so we sat down on the low wall, snacked on our peanuts and waited to see what this was all about. Soon the first red skirts were visible among the trees: it looked as if a procession was winding up the hill, indigenous women and men, walking in a set pattern, a man waving a white flag at the front. A decorated brown alpaca was part of this strange group as well. They crossed the Inca road and, pipes and drums playing the same few bars of music over and over, slowly disappeared around the corner and downhill until, again, we only heard the faint sound of the instruments. While we were puzzled as to what this might all mean we felt very fortunate to have been there just at the right moment.

We passed another 'pay station' along the road where the Challa community collects a small fee, money they use for their community. Already we could see the little town of Yumani on top of a small rise and soon would have to look for a place to sleep. A few hundred metres before we reached the town a small, well-maintained group of little bungalows to our left and what seemed like a restaurant to our right caught our eye: somebody was trying very hard to beautify this sere landscape with a flower garden. Roses, snapdragons, geraniums and dahlias were in bloom. A middle-aged man approached us and asked if we were looking for a room.

His English speaking daughter showed us around, and we decided to end today's journey here, away from the certainly more lively town with its tourists who, like us, had hiked the Inca road. It felt right to end this remarkable day in these peaceful surroundings.

It turned out that we had chosen well: when it got dark we walked down to the beautiful rustic restaurant where we already found the adobe fireplace in its centre lit, had a tasty meal – the best trout I have eaten so far in this area that is famous for its trout – and were even supplied with hot water bottles for the chilly, stormy night.

When we woke up in the morning, bird songs the only thing we heard, the sun was shining again. We walked down to the port through the little town with its peaceful Sunday-morning feel. Donkeys were crossing our path on the way down to the well where they would be loaded with water containers to take uphill to customers like our little hotel.

After the final descent, using yet another remarkable piece of Inca architecture, a long set of stairs lined by walled-in small gardens, we reached the dock. The boat, loaded like the day before, took us 'home' to Copacabana from where we would soon embark on yet another adventure.