Adventure Bus Travel and Lake Titicaca
Today we are on Lake Titicaca, staying outside of Puno in a really lovely hotel called the Taypikala, which is being built above us as we sleep... just kidding. At the Taypikala, in their new section, we are one of maybe 3 guests and because it´s off season, or maybe because they are building it over our heads, we are paying $52 for 4 star service & luxury, really very nice since the posted cost is $67.
This gives us a large room with two comfy double beds out in the countryside looking right out on to the lake, over some plowed pastures then an adobe cottage then reeds & channels filled with water birds. Today we woke early and hiked up through the small town of Chucuito, which is famous for its fertility site, which has yard high penises scattered all over pointing down to mother earth and up to the sky. From the town we went up old roads lined with high stone walls then out into the countryside climbing quite quickly several thousand feet to look down on the lake. Along the way we passed small adobe farms and climbed up old preInca terraces. We found some old ruins on our own, including an ancient (empty) tower-shaped tomb.
Chucuito´s inhabitants are really nice to us, many of the kids want to be our tour guide and they explain all the facts of life in the most serious, dignified way, it´s very entertaining. The ladies sit around knitting tiny Christmas tree ornaments and finger puppets. In general, people here are quite friendly but very stoic, not emotional. Last night we were admiring the sky and the man in the nearby house came out and talked with us at length about his planned crops, his tail-wagging guard dog and places we have both been. The sky was full of tall thunderheads tinged with pink as the sun set and it was really nice to talk to this man as various women dressed in wide velvet skirts and bowler hats brought their cows and burros home.
It´s also really nice to be here because this is the same town I stayed at as a child, when there was only one hotel outside of puno, called ¨Tambo¨, it had 3 guest rooms and authentic German featherbeds and served trout and German food.
Our trip up from Arequipa was so much fun. The ride up to Puno is now on smooth paved roads and takes 5 hours as opposed to my childhood when it was a 12 hr overnight train ride. We were on the first class bus and it had movies and bingo. Bingo means everyone gets a card and the cute stewardess calls out numbers and you have to get ALL the spots on your card to win, and after a while to make it more fun she made up trivia questions like "who remembers my name" to then get people to select the numbers they need. After we had a winner, the winner had to sing a song to all of us before she could win the prize of the free bus trip back; and if she had lied about her numbers she would have had to do something else embarrassing. She sang a little song about an illicit love tryst. Meanwhile the landscape outside was slipping by, extremely arid but very beautiful, and as we were crossing a wide dried lake bed with high peaks on each side and watching a movie called "the core", which features a space shuttle crash, just as the movie shuttle crashed there was a large BANG and half the bus lifted up in the air about 4 inches. Our own quake! A tire had exploded with so much force the metal sides of the bus were deformed. To help with the changing they rolled the bus up onto rocks as well as using the jack and we all spilled out onto the lake bed to watch. From nowhere, a middle aged indian man bicycled up with his dog. We were out under the blue andean sky and it was a lot of fun. Craig I´m sure will write about this in detail on his blog.
In Arequipa we had one more nice adventure, with a middle aged pair of brothers who run a restaurant devoted to ancient andean cooking - no metal implements, cooking is done over hot stones or fire or with a solar oven. We had excellent local shrimps which taste just like lobster, a tasty shrimp-cream-pumpkin-corn-herb soup, and other fabulous items. But more interesting was this guys philosophy, a sort of we-all-speak-the-same language dreaming. We learned all about the voyages Jesus took up through latin america during his lifetime before he went back to palestine to be crucified. The brothers took us up on the roof of their second-story restaurant in the plaza de armas so we were up above all of Arequipa, hopping from one building to another. His restaurant is called Socollay which basically means Aloha -- from the little heart, in Quechua.
I think that´s enough writing for now. We are going to Sillustani, some ancient towershaped tombs. I´m happy that we found our own tomb today, out hiking in the hills. Tomorrow we take an all day tour to Cusco, which takes the smooth 5 hour journey and breaks it up with stops at all the important ruins in between. This costs about $25 each U.S., compared with $8 for the first class direct bus, $15 for the backpackers train and $110 for the luxury train. ( I´m including this info on costs, in case someone else wants to do this trip someday).
Oh I forgot, we bought beautiful alpaca sweaters. Nice styles, excellent soft alpaca, average cost $50 to $60 in Arequipa, $30 in Puno, they will be much more in Cusco. Also we heard of a really great thing I wish we could do: An alpaca farm outside of Puno (owned by an Arequipa family, the Mitchells) has a hotel, for $70 a person, all meals, including llama treks and horse back riding. It looks fabulous. We talked to the owners, but unfortunately the administrator will be away. It´s called Mallkini, I think, and it has a beautiful website I´lll find later.
aloha, a hui ho!
This gives us a large room with two comfy double beds out in the countryside looking right out on to the lake, over some plowed pastures then an adobe cottage then reeds & channels filled with water birds. Today we woke early and hiked up through the small town of Chucuito, which is famous for its fertility site, which has yard high penises scattered all over pointing down to mother earth and up to the sky. From the town we went up old roads lined with high stone walls then out into the countryside climbing quite quickly several thousand feet to look down on the lake. Along the way we passed small adobe farms and climbed up old preInca terraces. We found some old ruins on our own, including an ancient (empty) tower-shaped tomb.
Chucuito´s inhabitants are really nice to us, many of the kids want to be our tour guide and they explain all the facts of life in the most serious, dignified way, it´s very entertaining. The ladies sit around knitting tiny Christmas tree ornaments and finger puppets. In general, people here are quite friendly but very stoic, not emotional. Last night we were admiring the sky and the man in the nearby house came out and talked with us at length about his planned crops, his tail-wagging guard dog and places we have both been. The sky was full of tall thunderheads tinged with pink as the sun set and it was really nice to talk to this man as various women dressed in wide velvet skirts and bowler hats brought their cows and burros home.
It´s also really nice to be here because this is the same town I stayed at as a child, when there was only one hotel outside of puno, called ¨Tambo¨, it had 3 guest rooms and authentic German featherbeds and served trout and German food.
Our trip up from Arequipa was so much fun. The ride up to Puno is now on smooth paved roads and takes 5 hours as opposed to my childhood when it was a 12 hr overnight train ride. We were on the first class bus and it had movies and bingo. Bingo means everyone gets a card and the cute stewardess calls out numbers and you have to get ALL the spots on your card to win, and after a while to make it more fun she made up trivia questions like "who remembers my name" to then get people to select the numbers they need. After we had a winner, the winner had to sing a song to all of us before she could win the prize of the free bus trip back; and if she had lied about her numbers she would have had to do something else embarrassing. She sang a little song about an illicit love tryst. Meanwhile the landscape outside was slipping by, extremely arid but very beautiful, and as we were crossing a wide dried lake bed with high peaks on each side and watching a movie called "the core", which features a space shuttle crash, just as the movie shuttle crashed there was a large BANG and half the bus lifted up in the air about 4 inches. Our own quake! A tire had exploded with so much force the metal sides of the bus were deformed. To help with the changing they rolled the bus up onto rocks as well as using the jack and we all spilled out onto the lake bed to watch. From nowhere, a middle aged indian man bicycled up with his dog. We were out under the blue andean sky and it was a lot of fun. Craig I´m sure will write about this in detail on his blog.
In Arequipa we had one more nice adventure, with a middle aged pair of brothers who run a restaurant devoted to ancient andean cooking - no metal implements, cooking is done over hot stones or fire or with a solar oven. We had excellent local shrimps which taste just like lobster, a tasty shrimp-cream-pumpkin-corn-herb soup, and other fabulous items. But more interesting was this guys philosophy, a sort of we-all-speak-the-same language dreaming. We learned all about the voyages Jesus took up through latin america during his lifetime before he went back to palestine to be crucified. The brothers took us up on the roof of their second-story restaurant in the plaza de armas so we were up above all of Arequipa, hopping from one building to another. His restaurant is called Socollay which basically means Aloha -- from the little heart, in Quechua.
I think that´s enough writing for now. We are going to Sillustani, some ancient towershaped tombs. I´m happy that we found our own tomb today, out hiking in the hills. Tomorrow we take an all day tour to Cusco, which takes the smooth 5 hour journey and breaks it up with stops at all the important ruins in between. This costs about $25 each U.S., compared with $8 for the first class direct bus, $15 for the backpackers train and $110 for the luxury train. ( I´m including this info on costs, in case someone else wants to do this trip someday).
Oh I forgot, we bought beautiful alpaca sweaters. Nice styles, excellent soft alpaca, average cost $50 to $60 in Arequipa, $30 in Puno, they will be much more in Cusco. Also we heard of a really great thing I wish we could do: An alpaca farm outside of Puno (owned by an Arequipa family, the Mitchells) has a hotel, for $70 a person, all meals, including llama treks and horse back riding. It looks fabulous. We talked to the owners, but unfortunately the administrator will be away. It´s called Mallkini, I think, and it has a beautiful website I´lll find later.
aloha, a hui ho!
posted by Craig and Amy at 7:12 PM
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