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Spending two nights in Puno we took the time to visit the
Uros floating Islands . A lot of people refer to this as a tourist trap but the way I see it they are welcoming us on to their home and you can't blame them for earning a living by selling their beautiful inexpensive crafts to tourist.
While on one of the islands I picked up six small flutes for a whopping two dollars. An enjoyable visit considnering we wren't planning to visit the islands but we had walked down to the water front stopping at a naval museum allong the way - a man, seeing two non-locals, approached us and asked if we'd like to visit Urus. So we're like, how much? He says ten Soles which is roughly three dollars eacc. Then we ask more importantly how long would it take as we signed up for a two O'clock tour to a Inca graveyard... he assured us that it would the two hours round trip which would get us back in time to have a quick bite to eat before heading on our afternoon scheduled fun.
Sillustani Ruins We were the first to be
Sean mistakenly thought this was
the Yavari ship we later realized that it was the Ollanta and the ship we were looking for was a taxi drive away picked up by the agency once on board the mini-van wound it's way all over town, picking up fellow visitors, until we seem to stop altogether; the bus seems full but apparently we are waiting for two people who've just arrived and are on their way to catch up with us. Our guide says their five minutes then we can proceed to the site. They arrive by taxi out of breath and looking a bit frazzled (their happen to be Italians from Puglia).
As we drive towards our destination we pass these really nice campesino adobe homes with arched entries and inner courtyards they appear larger than most homes - may have multiple generations, not sure, living on the same land. We can see the site in the distance in the afternoon light it's quite striking.
At an actual tomb now, our guide explians how the entrances all face East. Towards the new Sun, new beginnings, essentially new life contrary to the West that represents death, the end of life where the Sun disappears from sight. This particular tomb has been struck by lightening several times which is why it is exposed and half the of it lays
nice and green
waiting for our tug boat to get to the floating isles scattered on the ground.
The stones are massive in size, one has a lizard carved into it's side. In appearance they are like cylinders narrow at the base and wider at top mainly for balance as the size of the blocks to contruct a tomb also vary in size the largest located in the center. While other tombs are square in shape not much is known about the people or the site only that the Inca adopted thier customs. It's speculated that some of the larger tombs may have contained upwards of 20 bodies.
That of the Inca nobleman, their concubines, servants, llamas and an abundance of offerings including food, drink, gold, and silver which was replenished yearly - I think he meant only the food, drink and metals?
Towards the end of our guided tour Jorge ask us to look towards Lake Umayo and pointed out an island to us with it's mesa plateu as a nature reserve. Home to a protected type of llama, sorry to have forgotten the name of this animal, whose wool goes for 800$ a kilo - the finest wool in the world!
At this point our guided tour is
over and we have a half an hour to explore on our own. Emphasising that we need to be back at the vehicle promptly at 430pm. As the sun was setting and time was running short ater explñoring further along we saw various shapes and sizes of tombs. We begin to walk back with the a German student called Inca. She's studying Spanish for a month in Puno before heading to Cusco for a work experience job in the hotel business - working her way up the ladder within the industry. Back in the parking lot there are several vendors selling their wears I pick up a knitted hat with floppy doggy ears because it's freezing now that the sun has nearly set.
Like the beginning of the bus ride, we are waiting on a couple of people one of the girls got back a bit late and she seemed to have a few words with the guide and when she sat she looked pretty pissed off in the American sense of the word.
Everyone is quite heading back to the centre of town. So it seems we leave the sacred site in silence until Jorge ask if
San Antonio
our trusty boat hopped from island to island wether we prefer to be dropped off in the Plaza de Armas or at our repective hotels. Sean and I were the only one to choose the Plaza everyone one else looked and stated clearly that they wanted hotel drop-off.
We get off at the Plaza and I'm a bit disoriented, as usual, so Sean points us in the right direction towards the pedestrian walk-way and our hotel. The place is busy with people going one direction or another. We decided to take an easy evening and instead of signing up for the touristico bus over the border to Bolivia we would sleep-in , take a local bus to the border in the afternoon and get one more attraction in. That would be the Yavari.
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