A Lake Like An Ocean, Floating Islands And The Temples Of Mother Earth

The last blog entry that I finished was just after I arrived in Puno. Puno is the small city that is right next to Lake Titicaca in Peru. Puno is home to two ancient cultures and languages...Quechua and Aymara. Most of us probably remember Lake Titicaca from our early grade school geography classes because in our language, the word Titicaca sounds like 'boobies and poop'. Ha ha, I know. Everyone loves a poop joke. Most all of the northamericanos here confirmed this memory. Because of this phenom, I was interested in learning the true meaning of the name, and the local history, once again, refused to let me down. First of all, the Caca part of the word is actually pronounced Haha, but with the sound that the letter J makes in spanish, like the name Jorge. Second, Titicaca translates to Stone Puma. The Lake of the Stone Puma. Much cooler than Titicaca.

On the trip down to Puno, I had met some cool people and upon arrival, this Canadian guy called Daniel and I set to planning a trip through the islands of the massive lake. It is almost more of an inland sea really, straddling the border of Peru and Bolivia, and containing tens of islands full of people with their old world cultures still intact. The following morning we were up with the dawn and heading out on a small motorboat to visit three distinct destinations.

The first place we visited was an interesting place indeed. Hundreds of years ago there was an Incan King named PachaCuti who worked hard to expand the Incan Empire. He moved outwards in all directions from Cusco and conquered many smaller tribes of people. One of the groups that he took on was a group that lived on the shores of Titicaca and as they fled certain destruction and/or integration to the empire, they created a way of life not duplicated anywhere else on the planet. They began by fleeing on boats into the great lake. They lived on these boats through rain and shine and gradually, as they realized that if they wanted to retain their identity they would have to live on the lake, they developed a floating community. They started by building small houses out of reeds onto the top of their boats, eating, sleeping and fishing...but after time the boats were replaced by islands that themselves were made out of reeds and could house tens of families. These floating islands still exist today, and thanks to tourism, are flourishing with solar panels and lively markets. This series of tens of floating islands was our first stop that day. The houses, the boats, the lookout towers; all are built from the reeds that grow in the water all around. They dry them and then use them to weave all of the things that we usually think of being made out of wood or some other modern building material. It is really intriguing to look around these islands. The people are all well educated, and because their lives are supported by tourism, they are friendly and welcoming. They make a couple specific types of blankets and both the men and the woman are busy creating things to sell, both in the markets in Puno, and on the individual islands themselves.

After this, it was back on the boat for three hours of sailing to the isla of Taquile where we ended up staying overnight with a family. We came ashore on a brilliantly sunny afternoon. The quality of air and light and water cannot be over-exaggerated in this place. It has something of the magic of Cusco in it. The water sparkles a blue that seems to be forgetton by water on other parts of the globe. The air is cool and pure and the light which passes through it has the same quality of truth. We were greated by the woman that was to be our 'mother' for the time spent on the island. We followed her back to her house and we met two of her three children. All were dressed in their traditional garb and the mother was working on making lunch. The kitchen and dining room were both in a building separate from the main habitation. It was a dark little place made from adobe bricks and there was a light inside it but it was not very bright at all. I sat with the woman and helped peel potatoes. The stove was not a stove at all, but more of a fire with hot, less hot and more hot parts. She burned a combination of small logs and eucalyptus leaves, and the smell was enchanting. After an hour or so of listening to the bubbling of soup and smelling the richness of onions and garlic, we squatted down in the dirt at a flimsy wooden table, covered with a beautiful hand knitted blanket. The food was marvelous, giving a nod to what I wrote a few weeks back in Lima about food not needing to be complicated to be good. There is very little variation on the island, but it is all good. Quinoa soup with vegetables and potatoes, and a lot of rice and tomatoes and a local cows milk cheese that they sear to be golden brown. I found it similar to feta. Salty and fresh, it was a perfect foil for the starch heavy diet.

Speaking of heavy, Daniel and I found it interesting how all of the woman of the island were physically very large. It was obvious that the diet of potatoes, rice and quinoa was very carbohydrate heavy, but the children and men were all quite thin. It was, after all, a society that lived without the excesses of money or food, and the people have to work very hard and walk everywhere they go. It turned out, as we learned more about the local ways, that the larger a woman is in this culture, the more beautiful she is considered and a better wife she is percieved to have the potential to be. The women often layer on as many as six or seven skirts in order to appear in public to be bigger. I thought this interesting coming from the culture that I do. In the US we obviously place so much value in image and body shape and the damage that that mentality causes is costly and permanent. It was nice to witness a place where that global 'vomit-your-way-to-thinness' mentality didn't pervade. In fact, it was the opposite.

The relationship customs between man and woman were very interesting on these islands too. From a glance at the clothes of a man or woman you could tell almost everything about their status. The color of the decoration of the clothing and then the way it was worn would tell everyone how many kids someone had, whether they were single or married, happy or sad, mature and responsible or still juvenile, and many other things in addition. In this society, the women choose the men. So, for example, at a fiesta, a woman wearing a long shawl with a pom pom at the end that was colored a certain way, could wear it in a certain position to tell a man she was interested in him. He in turn, would wear his long stocking cap in a way that would say yes or no. All of this would happen with no words. In order to become married a man and a woman will live together for three years. If they get a long, then they become married, and if not, then they separate. There is no divorce in this society and after they are married, it is for life. A man, once married, will take on a position as a jefe or a leader of some facet of life. Agriculture, boating, tourism, etc. All of these men together form a panel that is the leadership of the community. There are no police, no judges or lawyers...if you have a problem with one person, then you have a problem with the whole island. They also employ a technique of working that I find fascinating and effective, if only in this small group, it certainly works well. When one of the three thousand inhabitants needs a new house built, all the others come to help. The entire house is built within a manner of hours. No one is paid and there are no benefits or 401k plans. The payback is that when some other person needs work done, they all go to help. Socialist naysayers can shut the hell up at this point because it has worked in this place for thousands of years.

After the lunch we climbed to the top of the mountians on the island to visit the temples of Pachamama and Pachatata. These words mean Earth Mother and Earth Father. They are on separate peaks and the sacred temples are only entered once a year by the inhabitants of the island. They overlook the water in all directions and from there I sat and watched the sun set while the chill of the high-elevation air came on. I bundled up in a scarf and warm hat and jacket and watched the elders chewing coca leaves on some rocks across the way. When they greet each other in this society, it is customary to give the other a pinch of coca leaves. They do not recieve these leaves with their hands, they may only recieve them in their folded over shirts, or skirts, or, as is most common, based on the local wardrobe, their hats.

Here is something important for those reading this in the first world. Coca leaves ARE NOT DRUGS, only the refinement of the leaves can produce the powder that we know of as cocaine. It takes twenty five pounds of leaves to produce one gram of refined cocaine. The chewing of coca leaves has been a normal part of life here since thousands of years BC. In the local belief system, PachaCoca, the coca leaf, is considered one of the many gods. It was used to communicate with other gods, and at times it was used to communicate with the land of the dead. In the history of the people here, rare was the period of prosperity. Life was hard, life was pain. It is cold here, and the manual work difficult. Coca leaves, when chewed, can take the edge off hunger and pain and give extra energy for working longer hours. When the christians first made their way here, they deemed the coca leaf to be a product of the devil. They took it away from the people and made them suffer for the habit. Then, as they began to exploit the indigenous locals in the mines of Potosi and elsewhere, they discovered that by allowing these workers to chew the coca leaves, they could get longer hours and higher productivity out of them. (Sound like the capitalist work ethic we're still so proud of? Maybe if the children in the sweatshops of Southeast Asia chewed coca leaves we could get more toys out of them by Christmas time!! Ooooh snap.) Soon they were forcing the laborers to work 48 hour stretches underground in these mines, with little or nothing to eat. The workers were living dead, the only thing keeping them going was the energy that their bodies derived from these leaves. The Hispanics soon put a tax on these leaves, so as to make even more money, and with the quantity of labor the value of the plant skyrocketed. The French and Americans capitalized on the properties of the plant with coca wine, and eventually a coca drink was developed by a man called Pemberton, in the southern American city of Atlanta. This drink eventually took on the name of Coca Cola. Merck experimented with the plant. Freud wrote about it. Cocaine as a drug has become a major problem in the developed world, but it is the demand, not the plant of coca being grown in the wilds of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Columbia that is the problem. A major divide between the policies of the Bolivian government and the rest of the anti-drug world, is the protection of the traditions of this ancient people. We all know about the war on drugs, but looking into the eyes of these calm and dignified, yet impoverished people, one realizes that they are not the reason or the root of drug abuse on the streets of America and Europe. The issue is complex, and I am not going into it now, but it is something to think about the next time Jorge Bush or some other jackass is up in front of cameras, going on about how the war on drugs needs to be fought on foreign soil. Coca was a tradition without any harm to anyone for thousands of years, then whites got their hands on it and it warped their minds and made them mad (sick). The prophecy of this existed long before the events played out. PachaMama provided her people with a solution to the suffering present in their lives. The white invadors from the north would not respect or understand this gift, and so it would make them sick and wild. That prophecy was pretty much dead on.

Anyway, back on the island...we descended back off the hills to beat the darkness. The trails on this island are not marked and we needed to make it back to the habitation while we could still see. We were cooked dinner that was very similar to lunch and then we were led by the young daughter to a fiesta of local folklorica music and dancing. That night it grew very cold and after the rain fell for a half an hour, the sky cleared and the stars were as clear as I have seen them since I was in The Outback in Australia. It was breathtaking.

The next morning we awoke to the sounds of hail on the metal roof of our habitation. It soon turned to rain and it poured for hours. We had a local version of pancakes for breakfast with a tea made from an herb that seemed to me to be a cross between thyme and eucalyptus, called muña. Then we walked through the rain to the boat and went off to visit one final island. Because of the stormy weather, the waves were huge and our little boat tipped from crest to trough. Daniel vomited up his pancakes and muña and I closed my eyes and hung on by a thread until we docked at the third island. As we roamed around this island, the sun came out and we proceeded to eat trout with lime and ajì and get nice gringo-style sunburns.

We made it back to Puno that afternoon and quickly set to preparing to travel into Bolivia. It is not the cakewalk it used to be, evidently. I had to put together a veritable dossier of different things to cross the border. Photos, proof of finacial solvency, proof of hotel reservations, international vaccination card, etc. It is a very poor country. Many people suffer here from poverty, from all sorts of causes. There are attempts at progress happening now. There is a lot going on here in Bolivia currently. The country's first indiginous president, Evo Morales, has recently drafted a new constitution that leans heavily towards benefiting the poor. South America is famous for leaders who represent the people and it is also famous for bloody protests and right-wing coups. Here, at this time, four provinces in the east; provinces containing the majority of the country's economic wealth, are declaring their independence and trying to form a separate country. Those who know much of the modern era of proposed seccesion (i.e. Kurdistan, Basque Province, Quebec) know that this will never fly. So, that means that the army gets involved and people take to the streets. I am currently in La Paz where things are going down. I am going to refrain from writing any more on this subject until I am out of Bolivia. I will be soon heading south to the Salt Flats of Uyuni and San Pedro De Atacama, then I will be in Argentina, and then I will include more details. No worries to parents or concerned friends, I am safe here. That much is clear at this time. Ok, today is another day of preparation. Tomorrow I take an overrnight bus down south. Stay tuned for more adventures in the southland...