I've written about that thrill of discovery that happens when you arrive somewhere in the dark, then wake up and finally get the chance to look around at where you have landed. That happened today.
I came down the ramp that leads into the hotel's restaurant for breakfast, and I see the most magnificent blue water, then a little further down the ramp, I see green mountains being kissed by white fluffy clouds. It is stunning. The city of Puno sits along the right side of the lake, stacked house upon house up the side of the mountain. During breakfast, I can see a small herd of light brown guinea pigs running around the lawn. At some point, two llamas join them and begin grazing right outside the window. This is Lake Titicaca and I'm at 12,555 feet elevation. The clouds look closer than normal.
Side note about those wild guinea pigs - or "cuy." These are not the ones that they raise at home here for food. These are wild and a light brown color. These are the ones you might use to say, heal yourself from a physical or spiritual ailment. Apparently, the cuy is held tightly against the sufferer's body for a number of hours, and then sacrificed. Once the cuy is cut open, the healer can determine exactly what was wrong - the cuy is supposed to have absorbed all the bad things from the human, thereby rescuing them from their ailment.
I make the immediate decision to skip all afternoon activities and spend the majority of my day drinking wine and writing right here.
But first! The Floating Islands of Los Uros. A boat comes to the hotel's pier and chugs us slowly through a lake of reeds. We emerge in a community of floating islands, home to around 3,000 people. The people here use the reeds and their root systems to create small plots for houses and communal living. They can anchor the islands to the lake floor, so they don't float away, but they have to be nimble, as the lake rises and falls depending on the rainfall.
The reeds are layered over and over again, and the effect is a spongy feeling when you first step aboard. Their houses are made of reeds - but they have recently added solar power to their set up, which seems ingenious. This particular community made the decision to open themselves up to tourism, and the majority of the community's income stems from that. Others families decided to subsist on mainly fishing, so they (quite literally) cut themselves off from the others, and rowed their houses to a more remote section of the lake. Kind of like what I wish we could do with Florida every four years.
I buy a little reed boat, but can't quite commit to the elaborate embroidered fabrics. The ride in the reed boat is interesting and the scenery is stunning. The boats are made from reeds, with a modern twist. The people here collect empty plastic bottles and use them as flotation devices to buoy up the boats. This way, the reeds last longer because they don't become as water logged. What looks like a giant trash heap of plastic bottles, is actually a recycling plant.
The islands all have their own names and their own styles. Their reed boats reflect these differences, too. Some are elaborately decorated, with cat or snake faces on the front of the boat - or brightly colored.
We land, and there is much negotiating for space. While we wait, I spot two girls who are engaged in a serious project. They are attempting to create a swing out of a ladder and a rope. The older one is up the ladder, tying and untying knots as she scampers up and down the ladder to assess the success or failure of each rope placement. A small black kitten is being roughly passed between the two girls until it decides that perhaps all this rough affection is just too much and it makes a break for it.
This is Valentine's Day, of course, which I've always hated. There are only two black marks on this day...being alone and getting a Valentine's ecard from someone who once said he "would have raped me right in the airport." So there's that fun to deal with. Jesus. I've spoken to this person twice, ever, and the rape thing came up during the second - and last - conversation. I told him, "I'm pretty sure you should use other words to describe what you mean," and walked away. Since then, there was a weird invitation to his hotel room, he started following me on Google, and has tried calling me several times since. I blocked his number, but then received an email on Saturday, asking if I'd like to meet him in Hawaii, and maybe he could visit me on the way back? Then the strangely intimate Valentine's Day card. So Valentine's Day continues the long slide into the worst holiday EVER.
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