Memories are made of knits


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South America » Peru » Puno » Lake Titicaca
December 31st 2008
Published: February 4th 2009
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Seven hours on a cross-country bus, curled up contortionist-like in a dank, humid compartment with the window as company was enough for me to realise that I was now travelling on my own. Sharing a space is not always sharing an experience. The person at your side may brush off you in absent-minded intimacy, but you're miles back down the road. Or up ahead. Or you've already crossed into another country.

When the journeyings are over and all that remains is a fistful of photos and shockingly disparate recollections, someone else's memory may be of the oppressive smell of shower-deprived fellow-passengers and the glare of an over-exposed TV showing a version of Tarzan in syncopated English; mine was the silent movie of the passing countryside, a hypnotic landscape where cerulean mountains swayed beyond the tall grass and scrawny animals stumbled about the shrub-land. Very occasionally, a brightly-coloured bundle broke the monotony of blues and beige, bent low by a bridge, soaking clothes in a shallow stream or roaming through the pock-marked terrain. The roadside cemeteries suggested there were more dead than living in this place.

It was my journey and I had already begun to form its memories before ever setting foot on Peruvian soil. An overactive childhood imagination had created a Dr. Seuss-style utopia: a lake at the top of the world, where women wore plaits and multicoloured pompoms and floated from island to island in straw boats with monstrous heads. When I finally got there I was no longer travelling with my boyfriend, but with my seven-year old self.

As a needle-wielding youngster I'd also decided I had an affinity with the altiplano’s celebrated knitters, remembering this when chance circumstances threw us into the path of a man named Miguel. Hidden behind a pile of alpaca ponchos, he emerged to tell us about his handmade sweater vest and demonstrate how he spun his own wool with spittle and spindle. As he scuttled about, rooting out his favourite pieces in between encouraging me to return and spend a few months learning with the locals, I imagined him disappearing back into his warren of woollies and the whole place vanishing as soon as I’d turned around. We coincided in a common love of an ancient craft, but we could just as easily have bonded over a shared struggle with basic arithmetic: this man who could produce beautifully complex decorative patterns, like me counted on his fingers. I looked around for someone with whom to share a complicit glance. My travel companion had caught up.


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5th February 2009

So glad to come across your blog!
Love your writing style........you inject so much of you in the words you used i can just as well imagine what was going thru your mind. Keep writing!
5th February 2009

Picture Perfect
Thanks for sharing these wonderful pictures! It seems the seven-hour bus ride was worth it......
18th February 2009

Thanks for the comments, and happy travels! :)
12th December 2009

Others like me
I love what you wrote about your imagination! I have always wanted to go to Peru never had I seen anything on Lake TITITCACA. Thank you for turning me on to these fabulous sights. Now I know I must see it for myself. Thank you for sharing your experience.
2nd February 2010

Yes Maggi, I definitely recommend seeing it for yourself! Thank you for the comment.
10th March 2011

You are missed! :)
Check this out http://www.travelblog.org/Topics/27990-1.html
10th October 2011

A very delayed thanks!
Thank you very much, Mell! I've been away too long!

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