Saturday, May 27, 2006

Our hotel is conveniently located by Puno's large indoor market, so we stopped in there for an early lunch. The food stalls were just tiny booths with one or two women inside cooking and peeling and serving, and a table and benches in front. Most of the stalls focused on soups, but we found one with heartier options. I ordered the seco de cordero (lamb stew) and Michael went with the lomo saltado. We also each had a pineapple juice con leche from one of the many smoothie stalls. (We chose the one whose proprietress did not start shrieking the names of fruit at us as soon as we came into view.)

The guy next to me ordered sopa de cabeza, or head soup. Head soup is not a folksy nickname. He was served a large bowl of broth with a head in it. Goat, I think, with the eyes and everything. The food was good, and it turned out to cost two soles (about sixty cents) per plate, which was cheaper than the juice at 2.50 soles each. Sixty cents per plate. Unbelievable.

After that we took a taxi out to the Yavari, where Michael charmed the pants off some older English tourists. He just impressed the one woman to pieces when she said where she was from and Michael asked if that was near the Forest of Dean. "Wh- why, yes! How did you-Yes it is! Oh my goodness!" She's probably still talking about him. Anyway, the Yavari is a British-built ship that was shipped to Peru, carried over the Andes by mules over the course of six years, and launched on Lake Titicaca in 1870. One hundred years later it was beached, but now it's being restored again and people can take tours, which we did. Very interesting and attractive vessel, but I think it's best appreciated by someone who knows something about ships.

In the afternoon was our tour of the Floating Islands. We don't usually do two whole things in one day, but we're really trying to make the most of today because we want to get out of here tomorrow. We've heard Puno called a dump, and I don't know if I would agree with that, but I would definitely say it's nothing special.

The Floating Islands/Islas Flotantes are islands built by the Uros people out of the reeds that grow in Lake Titicaca. The Uros started building these islands centuries ago to keep themselves isolated and safe from other groups. It seems to have protected them from the ancient Inca, but not so much from the modern Tourist because they're now Titicaca's biggest Must See. Islands handmade out of reeds, that float? As soon as I heard of them I wanted to see them too.

We booked a tour through our hotel and the travel agent showed up in a cab and picked us up and then a Dutch couple and took us all out to the lake. Our tour boat was large and when we climbed down into the cabin, we were overwhelmed for a moment by the number of people on the benches lining the long narrow room. It seems that no matter whom you book your tour with, you end up in the same boat. We were some of the last to arrive, but I noticed the same "whoa" look on the faces of the people who showed up afterwards.

Michael recognized a Basque guy he'd met along the road to Puno during the protest and we sat with him while we waited for still more people. We finally took off a bit later than advertised. When we had gotten a certain distance away from land, we were allowed to go up to the roof, but only fifteen of us at a time. There was a mad scramble and Michael and I decided to just stay put, though eventually we went out back to get some fresh air. The lake was a pretty blue and we passed small stands and whole batches of golden reeds growing up out of it. After some time we came to our first island.

The island people were out and ready to greet us. They were all grinning. Not smiling, but grinning big, wide, painfully fake grins. I was immediately put off and actually stepped back so that a dozen other people leaped off the boat ahead of me. When I finally stepped off the boat, I sank into the reeds a little. They looked like straw and felt spongy. Not flimsy or scary, but not entirely solid either. When all twenty or thirty of us were on the island, our guide gathered us in the center where there was a little display board with the name of the island, Walikitata, and a drawing of the lake. Rolls of tied up reeds were brought for us to sit on. When most of us were quiet, our guide began.

"Well, my friends..." He gave his spiel alternating in English and Spanish and he began every English segment with, "Well, my friends." He did not do this in Spanish. We learned that while "Titicaca" sounds very amusing in both English and Spanish, it's actually from the Aymara language. Titi, meaning puma, and kaka, meaning gray, describe the lake, which is supposed to be shaped like a puma. The guide passed around a satellite photo as evidence. I didn't see it myself, but it doesn't look like not a puma, I guess.

The reeds, called kili, are almost four meters deep and anchored to the bottom of the lake to keep them from shifting. Every four or five weeks the islands' surfaces are maintained. No reeds are removed, they're just topped up to make up for the bottom layer rotting away.

As the guide and one particularly noisy group talked, there was quiet activity going on behind us. Peeking around, I saw souvenir displays being rapidly assembled and stocked. They were ready just in time for the end of the lecture and we were set free to purchase. It was a really hard sell. Suddenly I was everyone's amiga.

But I was more interested in looking around the island. It was a smallish island, with just a few reed houses arranged in a semicircle around the lecture area. It was very unpeaceful. The locals were calling out to the tourists non-stop, "Amiga! Amiga! Compra!" "(Friend! Friend! Buy!") The extra-noisy group within our group were running from place to place snapping photos and laughing. One of them ran up to an old local woman sitting on the reeds and got behind her, telling his friend to take a photo of them and to make sure to get the reed house behind them. Neither of them spoke to the woman either before or after. There were tourists everywhere taking photos, but these four were like day-campers running for the swings.

I finally headed over to one of the souvenir stands and decided to buy a couple of small clay boxes from a guy who was just so friendly and smiley and wonderful until the exact moment when the money hit his hand. After that he couldn't even be bothered to listen to me say "gracias."

We were going to another island after that, and we had the option of riding our tour boat or riding a Uros reed boat, for an additional one dollar or three soles. The reed boats are made of the same kili reeds as the islands, long strips of them tied together to make thick, tapering logs, and the logs tied together to form a canoe-shaped boat with a high prow formed to look like the swooping neck of an animal. Clearly some changes in design have occurred over the years; the creature's eyes are made of the bottoms of plastic soda bottles.

All but one of us opted to ride the reed boat. It was, of course, made of reeds, but it didn't look quite like the others we could see. It was two boats strapped together, and there was some kind of odd wooden platform on it that people were climbing onto to take photos.

The rowers grinned painfully as they rowed. The day-campers climbed up to the platform, snapped some photos, climbed down, balanced between the two heads of the reed boat for more photos. Then one of them took the oar from one of the local rowers and began to clumsily row. The rower grinned. They all took turns rowing and snapping pictures. A couple of older tourist ladies climbed up into the neck of the reed creature and sang.

When we were almost at the other island, the grins slid off the rowers' faces and one of them came around to collect the money. He looked very different without his molars showing. Thinner. Michael and I paid with dollars because we were almost out of soles and needed to make our remaining supply last until we got out of the country in the morning.

At the second island there was no lecture, just shopping. One of the day-campers dug a hole in the reeds and buried himself. "Amiiiiiga," called the souvenir ladies. "Amiiiiga." Michael tried to tell one of them that we'd bought something on the other island. But they're different families, he was told. You didn't buy anything from us. Another of the vendor ladies held out her hand to Michael and me to shake. She said her name was Maria and she asked ours. It was fake like cheese food, but we bought a bracelet made of seeds from her. She did not have change, so we gritted our teeth and bought another bracelet.

The sun was setting and the island was looking golden and pretty, but not peaceful. Tourists were running everywhere and the plaintive cry of the souvenir ladies filled the air. Michael and I climbed a small viewing platform. I didn't go all the way up because the ladder narrowed as it neared the top, and swayed alarmingly and I was too afraid. Still, I was high enough to see that behind a little fringe of vertical reeds there were more reed houses and these were more densely placed and less picturesque, topped by tin roofs.

That's when I decided it must all be fake. The islands were had visited were fake. Not only the smiles and the friendliness, but the islands themselves. They were dioramas put together for the tourists to gawk at.

And why not? If the floating islands needed to be "re-reeded" every four to five weeks under normal use, how much more often must they need to be redone with boatloads of tourists tromping around them twice a day and, for crying out loud, digging holes? And why would they want people peering into their homes and poking at their walls, as some of the group were doing? If the islands are man-made anyway, why not just build a separate island just for tourists and then just commute there daily with your trinkets for sale? It's actually pretty brilliant.

Michael called out to Maria as we were heading back to the boat, "Maria!" He waved. "Buenas tardes."

"Amiiiiigos," she said, "Commmpra..." and then "oh" when she recognized us, and with a quick "buenas tardes" she turned away.

I was sad as we climbed back onto the boat. The whole tour was stupid. The big friendly welcome we got was completely fake, but it didn't matter because our group did not earn a friendly welcome. We just rambled around and poked through all their stuff and didn't care any more about them than they did about us. We just wanted to see their weird straw islands, and they just wanted our money. It was all gross.

But the lake was pretty. It was getting colder as the sun set, and most of the group stayed below. Michael and I sat on the roof to enjoy the darkening view. The Basque guy was up there too, telling some girl about some herbs he'd taken while participating in a shamanic ritual in the jungle. "It makes you vomit," he was saying. "Or it makes you shit. I did both. But the vomiting is not bad. It's not painful, no headache, you know? It all just comes out so easily and it even tastes good."

A guy asked Michael to take his photo, and Michael did so. It turned out the guy was from Brazil and was on a nine-week trip around South America. His name was Dimitri and he spoke pretty dang good English, and Spanish as well. He was really nice and the three of us stood at the railing at the front of the boat and watched the lights of Puno swim towards us across the Gray Puma. I breathed in and out and tried to feel calm. I wanted to make this pleasant time and not the Floating Islands the note that Peru ended on.

The tour people stuck us in a minivan and took us back to our hotels. Michael and I had a two-sol, three-course dinner and bought tickets for $12 USD each from a bus company called Colectur that would pick us up at our hotel in the morning and take us to Copacabana, Bolivia.

 

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The Yavari, Lake Titicaca, Puno.

The Yavari's engine room.

Lake Titicaca, view from the tour boat to the Floating Islands.

Floating Islands tour boat, Lake Titicaca.

Floating island with tourists.

Kili/reeds that make up the islands.

Reed boat, Lake Titicaca.

Fooling around on the reed boat.

Floating Island.

Reed house, Floating Islands.

Tin-roofed houses over in the real neighborhood, Floating Islands.

Puno by night, view from Lake Titicaca.