We'd arrived in Puno, sitting proudly on the shores of Lake Titikaka. Booking into our own private room for the night into a nicer hotel turned out to be a bit of good fortune as I fell super ill, getting the worst stomach bug thingy I had ever experienced. If you don't like graphic descriptions then skip the rest of this paragraph out but it wrote us off for that entire day. With our private room came our own en suite literally a few yards from the bed which was awesome for me as I could manage an hour at most lying down until I had to go and empty the contents of my stomach, Iguasu falls style. Splash back was an issue! After quite some time of running back and forth to the toilet, a few times I literally finished one poo waterfall, sat back on the bed and immediately ran back for part two. I don't know where it was all coming from. Thinking it was just gonna be an issue of pooing, I was pretty upset to realise that I now felt sick as well. With the impending sick deciding to make itself known half way through waterall poo, I had to quickly block that passageway up in favour of another and through up into the mess that another orifice had just left. The smell is something that no person should ever have to go through, with the splattered pattern inches from my nostrils. No sooner had a finsihed throwing up that my original problem returned, so into the pooey sicky mess followed more streamline poo, which of course led to more splash back, leading me to literally be covered in shit and sick.
That was the fun that I had to endure for that night, sorry to be so graphic, but I thought that you should all know this kinda thing can happen to you when visiting these countries as it could happen to you! At least you'll be prepared so you should be thanking me! Anyway, fortunately this little stomach bug was only a 24 hour ordeal so I gathered up enough strength to get out the next morning. We took the opportunity go for a walk down by the harbour and randomly bumped into Lindsay and Jane who we had just conquered Machu Pichu with. Didn't think we'd be seeing them again this trip. They had just returned from a trip to some islands on Lake Titikaka and were quite tired so we left them to it and agreed to meet up for lunch later. Jen and I used the time inbetween to check out an awesome market where we purchased a few alpacha goods for ridiculously low prices. Meeting back up with the girls again later we tried to find a place for some stone baked pizzas but no where were doing them for lunch so we grabbed some lasagne of which I couldn't finish as I was still feeling a bit tender. And those of you who know my portion sizes will know thats an idicator of how ill I was!
Saying goodbye again to the girls Jen and I set off to book a trip to the Uros and Amantani islands, where the girls had just come from so the following morning we awaited for our minibus to pick us up from our hotel. An hour or so after the time we were told to be picked up, and with Jen worrying as per usual, a taxi turned up to take us to the harbour, clearly the minibus had forgotten to get us and they sent a taxi in its place. O well, we had got to the harbour and awaited our ride.
The wait was well worth it, as we sailed through the reeds (getting stuck on some), we finally turned up at the Uros islands which are actually constructed of straw and reeds!
Taking our first bouncy steps onto the islands we had a quick look around and were then shown how they construct and maintain their homes, with a huge mud block, which layers and layers of reed are placed ontop of. You could even eat this reed stuff when fresh, and it is as bad as it looks.
After our little demonstration we were shown someones little house thingy which was literally just a small room with a bed in it. The same person then pretty much bullied Jen into buying a cushion cover but I suppose it will be handy in the future, if you want to sit on the pachamama, I'm sure that won't offend her at all. When we were finally freed following the purchase we could climb up a viewing tower and have a good look around. It was then that you could really appreciate the islands, with over 100 families living out on the lake. They had everything they needed also with a floating church, hospital, school, shop amongst many other amenities.
Why were all these families out there though? Good question, living on lands seems like a much better idea. But the reasoning was quite simple.....to evade the Spanish who were burning down the houses in Puno itself, the people fled to the waters and simply never returned! Well they do return for things they need but the floating islands are their permanent homes. And the best bit is, if they don't like their neighbours, they simply untie their islands and float somewhere else and tie up there. Every cloud....
We were even given the opportinity to go on a reed boat which were awesome and took a 15 minute rowed trip whereas a powered boat would do the same in about 1 minute.
Here's the poor girl rowing her heart out. Don't envy her. I wonder if she knows that the other boats have engines, perhaps someone should tell her. It's not like they're against technology with each of them donning a mobile phone, getting reception out in the middle of Lake Titikaka when I can't even get any reception in little Gilmorton.
Jumping back on the boat we set off to our second island of Amantani. This one was actually a permanent island made of rock and whatever else it is that normal islands are made of so no more jelly legs for us. After a short walk up the banks we were met by the locals of who would house us for the night. After our meeting and greeting we were led off to the families home where they presented us with hats as it was pretty nippy, mine being a childrens hat as it barely fit on my head. Wearing one like this is in though right?!
The head of the family we were staying with spoke the native Quechua but also Spanish, and their children only spoke Spanish. They were a typical Peruvian family were traditions were quite strong with the wife spending most of her time in the kitchen whilst the head sat down and spoke to us. Well he spoke to me as Jen wasn't confident with her Spanish but I managed to hold a conversation whislt Jen just sat there smiling in the corner. They had 5 girls, 4 of whom were really shy and kind of stayed away from us whilst we were given dinner which was really tasty. The 5th girl was a bit older and talked to us and would later take us to a party. The younger girls would eventually grow a bit more confident though and came and sat with us and as they were shy I communicated with them by writing questions down on a napkin, much to their delight. It was so humbling being here, as they family would do everything they could to make us welcome there, even though we couldn't fully communicate with each other due to my mediocre Spanish. But you could just tell that they were really nice people.
Before dinner though we went for a stroll to the highest point on the island where we could take in the views. The water was so blue, it was pretty ace.
With the night creeping in we Jen deemed a wall a good photo....
.....but the sun set was more impressive.
Back down we came and back to the family house where they dressed us up in traditional clothing ready for a party in the communities centre, kind of like our town halls. It made me chuckle somewhat as upon receiving our outfits, the eldest girl and mother dressed Jen up in about 10 bits of clothing which took a good 20 minutes. When she was done the father took all of 5 seconds to drape a poncho on me.
Getting to the venue we all sat down around the side of the room and chatted to others that were visiting and dressed up. Then the live band started and the girl from our family jumped up and dragges us into the middle to dance. Traditional dancing consisted of all holding hands in a big circle, walking around anti clockwise, throwing your arms about wildly hence throwing the persons hands around you were holding, and sometimes being dragged into the middle of the circle and back out again. Pretty easy to pick up and although it might not sound much fun, was actually one of my favourite experiences of the whole travelling 6 month fiasco. The music was lively, everyone was dressed up and it was dead easy to pick up their dance, and the locals were all so happy. They don't have much and dancing is one of their ways of having fun and to be a part of it was massively rewarding.
After a great night we walked back to the house in the pitch black which was pretty dam hard with only our little head torches to navigate slippery mud paths and rocks sticking out. But we made it and had a good nights sleep after all the dancing about.
The next morning we said our goodbyes to the family, giving them a bag full of pasta, some sauce and some tuna which they were really grateful for, something that we would take for granted. I then asked the father if I could give his kids some sweets which I just so happened to have (if you're wondering I don't normally hand out sweets to small girls I've just met so hold off on the jokes!) and he was more than happy for me to do so. The look on their little faces brought further realisation to what little they had, they were so happy and it was nice to see them that way. Further more, my little correspondance on napkins the previous day had led me to discover their favourite fruits, and although not fruits themselves, they were their favourite flavours!
It was strangely sad to leave some people that we had only just met, but it was sad to say our goodbyes, but that we did and headed off to another island on the way back to Puno where we grabbed lunch with the rest of our tour group and found out how far away home was.
To add to the experience there was a riot happening in the streets outside the restaurant which actually got quite bad with tear gas going off at one point. It was bad enough for the restaurant to lock us in and put the wire covers down meaning we had to stay in until the riot had passed.
Anyway we could finally say we had fully experienced Peru after our guinea pig dinner so off to bed we went and got up the next morning ready for our final country in South America, Bolivia.
No comments:
Post a Comment