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Published: April 2nd 2008
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Arrive in Puno after a relatively short bus journey and check into a hostal near the centre. Have a quick wander around and find Puno to be another nice place. Main difference from Bolivia is in the modes of transport. More like Asia with tuk-tuk type moto taxis everywhere. Book ourselves on a tour of the nearby islands in Lake Titikaka for tomorrow and then head for dinner.
A 3 course dinner in a nice restaurant on the main strip costs less than E4.00. Not bad but still dearer than La Paz where it was E2.50. I sample the Alpaca, which is like Llama, which is like steak with a bit of a kick.
Next morning and we´re collected from our hostal and put on a boat with about 20 other backpakers. First stop is the floating islands of the Uros people. These are artificial islands that they started forming a few hundred years ago out of reeds to avoid confrontation with some aggressive neighbouring tribes. Today it is a complete tourist trap with most of the people claiming to be living on the islands actually arriving from the mainland on a boat just before us. We are greeted
With the local girl
This kid was the best business women in Taquile. Everytime some one would try to take a picture she´d make sure she was in it and then ask for money. off our boat, given a quick explanation as to the making of the islands and then the women offer to show us their reed house (which they no longer live in but why let the truth get in the way). After maybe 10 secs we are ushered back to some stall to start the hard sell of all things woolen. We buy something small so as to get away. Next stop and it´s another reed island where more hard selling women await.
Back onto the boat for a 3 hour trip to Amantani, the island we will stay on that night. We are greeted off the boat by a load of local women who will be our hosts for the night. They start to pair tourists with locals and Niamh decides that we´ll go with the first one whose name we can say. So when Marta´s name gets called out we have our host.
We follow Marta up the hill to her house where we meet her husband Nicolas. Marta and Nicolas are in their mid fifties and the kids have all moved to the mainland. They live in what an estate agent might describe as a rustic
The Girl
Looks innocent house complete with outhouse. To flush the toilet you fill the basin provided from the bucket of water at the door and pour it down the toilet. Simple really. The kitchen and dining room are dirt floors and mud walls like you would have had in Ireland 100 years ago (probably still get it in Kerry, eh Ron) and although our bedroom is a little more modern, I´m sure the one they use isn´t. They scrape a subsistence living from a few small patches of terraced land (probably doesn´t add up to much more than a few acres) around the house and have a few sheep but are basically vegetarians by need as opposed to choice. They make a few extra dollars by taking in the likes of us, but from what we can make out this is only a couple of tourists every couple of weeks. And I mean a few dollars. They get around $4 per person from the tour company to cover food and accomodation. No wonder her eyes lit up and it was kisses all round when we gave her a big bag of fruit at the start and a decent tip at the end.
After a nice lunch of some quinoa(a local grain) soup, followed by vegtables with egg we have some tea made from weeds that Marta pulled on the walk up to the house. Considering I hate normal tea it´s a pleasant surprise to find that this is actually a nice mint orange flavour. Next up Marta brings out some more woolen products that are offered for sale. Seen as Niamh has mentioned a need for gloves over the last couple of days that´s what we buy.
After lunch we head out for a short walk and I end up in a football match with some of the local kids and a few other tourists. After a few minutes running around at this altitude (over 3900m) the lungs are burning so I take my turn as goalie. For the next half hour the local kids run rings around us. Next up we have an organised hike to the top of the island for sunset. When we get to the agreed meeting point in the football stadium we are confronted by more women trying to sell more woolen stuff. For the next 20 minutes we sit here for no reason than in
the hope that someone might breakdown and buy something. We then head off on our hike.
As we start our hike it´s apparent that the race is on, with numerous women running up the hill with their woolen stuff so that they can try and sell it to us at the top again. This is all getting a bit ridiculous. When we get to the top and negotiate our way past the sellers there is an Inca fort and nice views of the Lake below. After more vegetarian fare for dinner we are dressed up in the local clobber (see photos) by Marta for the local equivalent of a ceile. Good night had by all.
Next morning and it´s a lovely pancake breakfast, more hugs and kisses all round to our hosts and then down to the harbour for our boat to another island called Taquile.
Taquile is the rich neighbour of Amantani. That´s not to say rich by western standards, but thanks to their embracing of tourism most houses now have solar panels (no electricity on the islands) and the people have a higher standard of living. It´s a beautiful Island but a bit like finding
Knitting
The men knit the hats but do they do it in the harbour? yourself on the set of The Truman Show, where you don´t know what´s reality and what´s being staged for the tourists. Like when we get to the harbour to find a few men dotted around sitting knitting hats. Granted this is a tradition of the island, where the men knit their hats which can denote status, but do they really do it on the steps of the harbour when no tourists are around. I have my doubts. Some of the traditional clothes been worn by both men and women are too true to believe as well. Don´t get me wrong alot of the people throughout South America still wear the traditional clothes, in particular the women, but some of the individuals wandering around are a little too well turned out to be heading of to plough the fields. The tour ends with another vegetarian (I won´t be embracing it full time) lunch and our boat back to the mainland.
In hindsight we probably should have visited the islands on our own and that way avoided alot of the staged selling and the floating tourist traps, but thanks to our hosts on Amantani and the surrounding scenery we´re still glad
In the Out House
Niamh in the out house. That´s the bucket for flushing the toilet outside the door. we did it.
That night we headed out for dinner and a few drinks with about 10 others from our tour group and next morning headed for Arequipa.
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