Before we began our trek, we spent half a day in Cusco jumping between tourism companies planning for the following week when we would return from Machu Picchu. Booking things a week in advance constitutes the kind of foresight not commonly practiced in South America, so we had a difficult time setting things in stone. The best we could do was give money to some guy near our hostel to buy us a bus ticket to Puno as soon as they went on sale (probably the day before the departure date) and arrange for someone to pick us up at the Puno bus terminal and give us a tour of Lake Titicaca when we arrived.
In addition to the sketchy agency we hired to pick us up from the train station and book our bus tickets, I was also concerned about the hostel we stayed at in Cusco that was holding our bags for us while we were on the trail. We forgot to return our room keys to the front desk when we left, and I was sure they would try to charge us for the week we were away when we tried to retrieve our bags. We briefly discussed our plans to make a run for it if they tried to pin a week of charges on us, but my paranoia turned out to be unjustified and we got away without them even knowing we had the keys (Asia just left them on a couch in the lobby).
Somehow nothing went wrong with our arrangements and we managed to get on a bus to Puno late the night of the same day that we were at Machu Picchu.
Puno
From the first day we arrived in Lima I was surprised about how cold Peru was. I had been used to the "eternal spring" climate of Ambato, but as we moved away from the equator we apparently stepped into Peru during its winter season. Puno only provided more provocation for the steady stream of "Why is it this cold, aren't we in South America?" comments that had been pouring out of my mouth the entire trip.
The only instructions we had for what to do after the bus ride was to look for a man called Alvaro, which turned out to be pretty easy because he was holding a sign that said "Asia" on it in the bus terminal. Alvaro then brought us to his tourism company's office, which was really just his living room. We apparently weren't the only tourists who had the idea to take a night bus and to get to Puno early in the morning because even though we got to Alvaro's place before sunrise, the couches were already saturated with napping backpackers awaiting the start of the tour when we arrived.
Lake Titicaca
As advertised, Lake Titicaca was massive. But we have massive lakes in the U.S. too, so what's the big deal about Titicaca? First off, it is the highest lake in the world. That fact is not something that is easily appreciated while actually at the lake, but it is fun to think about how a pool of water that big ends up at 12,500ft above sea level. The second interesting thing about the lake are the floating islands within it.
The people who live on the floating islands are descendants of pre-Incan people, so they have been around Peru for a very long time. From what I understood from our tour guide, they were driven out of the mountains by the Incan Empire and resorted to making their own islands in the lake to live on.
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| Some locals show us how they build the floating islands they live on |
The islands and the houses are made out of a reed that grows in the lake. Again, a long time has elapsed between when I took that tour and now when I am writing this, but I think they said that two times a month they add another layer of reed to the island to make up for the deterioration of the lower layers over time. Standing on the island is an interesting sensation because the ground is very soft and mushy, and when waves come by the floor ripples with the water.
The reed houses were neat too, and according to the resident I asked it only takes them a single day to build one.
One interesting consequence of the construction of the floating islands is that sections can be cut off or added to change the size of the islands as necessary. One of the men on the island we visited had recently gotten married so his wife moved from her island to his island to live with him. The number of people on the island then exceeded the allowed population (10 inhabitants), so they had to divide the island into two smaller ones.
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| The colorful hat the fourth woman from the right is wearing announces to potential male suitors that she is single. |
After checking out a couple of floating islands, we visited a permanent island called Tequile where we ate lunch and learned a bit more about the customs of the people of Lake Titicaca.
The lake is shared by Peru and Bolivia, with the border between the two countries passing through the lake. While it is not legal to dock on the Bolivian side without the proper visa, it is permitted to travel on the water to the Bolivian side of the lake and technically be in Bolivia. I was hoping our guide would go a bit farther so I could say that I had been to Bolivia, but we were sitting on the boat for six hours that day so I'm actually glad we didn't add any other stops to our trip that day.
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| View of the lake from Puno |
Overall, I would have to say that Lake Titicaca wasn't incredibly exciting. It made sense for us to go since we were so close and it wasn't that far out of the way going to Arequipa, but I don't think it warrants a trip alone. Also, the tour was too touristy for my tastes. Since we were on a boat we had to stay with the group on a linear path, and the entire time we were pressured to buy things and give money to people waiting for us on the path they knew we would walk on.
Another Rant About Tourism
When the tour around lake Titicaca started, I admit that I felt bad for the natives of the floating islands and Tequile. On the floating island, the people had a corny little show planned out for tourist groups with set-ups from the guide and punchlines from the islanders in response. They exhibited their houses to us and at the end sang a song in the language of each tourist's native tongue (which that day included Spanish, English, and Japanese). When we ate lunch at Tequile, a group of indigenous people came and did a song and dance for us and went around the crowd for money. My first instinct was to feel weird and somehow bad for paying them to make them perform their cultural traditions for us.
As I thought about it more my opinion changed. Sure they are in a way selling out by interrupting their traditional lifestyle and typical professions to put on a show to demonstrate to visitors what they would be doing if tourists weren't around, but the reality of the world we live in is that pretty much everyone has to sell out from time to time to make a living.
Musicians can't always create the kind of music they want because that is rarely what the majority of people want to pay to hear. They need to satisfy their record labels to make hits and generate money, and once they have their own funds they can put out whatever kind of music they want because money is no longer the goal and the music is about the music again.
My dad works at two hospitals: one in an affluent neighborhood and one in a poor neighborhood. I haven't met too many people who are as passionate about their jobs as he is, and one time I asked him why he likes it so much. He admitted that he works in the affluent neighborhood because it pays, but that his real inspiration and motivation for continuing to work (and he works a lot) comes from the cases he sees in the poor neighborhood where people have advanced disease and he feels like he does a lot of good.
And it's not always about money either; it can just be about identity. I can't remember all the times I had to edit my articles for the school magazine at Notre Dame because my particular word selections didn't fit with the style of the magazine. Did I like to edit my work to comply with the magazine and the audience they thought they were appealing to? Of course not, but I had to sell out a bit and change my writing style to get published and have anyone read my articles.
In any field there may be a few cases of people who happen to do what a lot of people like/what makes money and don't have to sell out to have success, but those situations are rare and it is foolish for anyone to expect that path in life. So while the people of Lake Titicaca probably don't like trying to make money by selling their culture to tourists, the fact is that it pays way better than anything else they can do on those islands.
For example, the lunch we were roped into cost about three times what we were paying for lunch in Lima and Cusco. At one point the natives offered us a ride to the next island in a fancy boat made of reed as an alternative to the standard gas powered boat we rode out there. 17 passengers accepted the 10 sol offer, so in 30 minutes that island made 170 soles (~$62). I don't know how long it would take that island to make that much money with their traditional industry
—trout farming
—but I can't feel sorry for someone who "sells out" for 30 minutes and makes that kind of money when, if it weren't for tourism, they would be raising and selling trout instead.
If people don't want to be involved in tourism, they can continue to live the traditional way their culture dictates, but that means they won't have the money to pay for developed world commodities (like the battery powered radios and televisions the people on the floating island had
—luxuries I imagine are not easily acquired by trout farming purists).
Arequipa
Our last stop in Peru was a city on the coast called Arequipa. In Arequipa we visited a few interesting places that included various mansions and churches, a convent where the nuns are never allowed to leave once they enter, and a museum that houses the nightmarishly creepy mummy of a sacrificed Incan girl.
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| Cathedral in the main square |
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| Volcano outside of Arequipa |
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| A typical Arequipan dish: rocoto relleno. Pepper stuffed with meat, potato on the side, and everything covered in cheese and egg. |
Peruvian Spanish
Unlike Ecuador, I really didn't notice a difference between the Spanish on the coast of Peru and in the mountains, so I will generalize about my experience with Peruvian Spanish to include everywhere I went.
Even on the coast, Peruvians speak very understandable Spanish. It is softer than the mountain Spanish in Ecuador (they hit their "ll" and "y" the same, like "ye") and it is slow (although not as slow as Ecuadorian mountain Spanish).
I also noticed that people are much less formal in Peru, and everyone
—including people selling us bus tickets and people working at the hostels
—referred to us using the informal second person singular
tú.
An interesting usage came from a woman we met in Cusco who was originally from the Peruvian jungle. She was the first person I've ever heard use the word
vuestro. I'm actually not completely sure what that means (I never learned these forms in any Spanish class), but I think it is the possessive adjective/pronoun for the second person singular
vos. I don't know how they use
vos in other countries, but in Ecuador they used it only with very informal relationships (more informal than
tú). I imagine it has the same connotation in Peru (I asked people about it, but unfortunately native speakers rarely know anything about their language except how to communicate in it), which goes to show just how informal they were even with strangers.
Wrap it Up
Arequipa was the final stop for Caitlin and I in Peru, and before we left we saw Asia off to the next part of her extended tour of South America. We caught a plane from Arequipa to Lima, got on a bus for 27 hours, then transferred to another bus for a 5 hour ride from Guayaquil to our final destination and home base: Ambato.
In comparison to Ecuador, Peru is an immense country that has a ton to offer. Two weeks was hardly enough time to see the country in its entirety, but I'm happy about our trip and what we were able to experience in a relatively short amount of time. Shout out to Caitlin and Asia for being all around troopers and rolling with the punches like one would expect from great travel buddies.
