Perhaps our greatest triumphs and tragedies occur in youth, when our skins are thin and wisdom is wrought from new experience…when the first taste is the sweetest and the first cut is the deepest. For yours truly there are seldom memories as saccharine as that of the 1990 Grassland Elementary Geography Bee. For reasons unknown, the entire 4th grade class crossed the country lane to the neighboring chapel, next to a farm with a burro we could blissfully beckon to as "Hey, You Ass!" without fear of reprimand. The church was something straight out of Footloose, and one by one incorrect responses were met with an order to sit on the floor in the middle of the room and shut up. It came down to me and a kid whose name I can no longer remember; “What Scandinavian nation exports the most automobiles?” I said Sweden. I can't remember what ol’ what’s his name said. Suddenly, I had more fair-weather friends than I’d ever had before. For a brief moment in time, the perpetually picked-on nerd became the glorified geography genius.
Besides the chance to represent my county in the state bee, my prize was an outdated children’s book, Far-Out Facts. Published by National Geographic Magazine, it was a compendium of abridged articles and photos from earlier periodicals. One of these blurbs headlined, “Bouncy Island Home”. It was about a tribe living on an artificial atoll in a body of water whose name appealed to my juvenile Hey You Ass! sense ofhumor, Lake Titicaca.
The world of the Uros people revolves around the tortora, a reed that grows in the shallows of the highest navigable lake on Earth. Some 500 years ago, in an effort to get away from the aggressive Inca, the Uros developed a method of building portable islets out layers of tortora, isolating themselves from their ornery onshore neighbors. In addition to providing the base for the islands themselves, the Uros construct their homes and boats from the abundant reeds, and even consume their soft, edible roots. Becoming aware of such a strange place completely blew my ten year-old mind. I said to myself, “Someday, I want to go there.”
I got my chance when Jill and I bought bus tickets to the Lake Titicaca town of Puno. For around $30, we were able to find a coach company that made four touristy stops and fed us a buffet lunch. The morning began in the little Andean hamlet of Andahuaylillas, and to a place nicknamed the “Sistine Chapel of the Americas”. The Church of San Pedro was one of many built during the missionary heyday of Peru. Five hundred years ago, emissaries of the exploitative Catholic Kingdom of Spain sought to justify their presence by leading natives to the Lord. In addition to outlawing coca (which they felt gave the locals satanic stamina) and quinoa (because the grain is not mentioned in the Bible), the Spanish bishops utilized every bit of bling available to make their sanctuaries shine. It was thought that lining the interior of a church in sparkly stuff would seduce the savages into salvation. In comparison to the riches of the Far East I had encountered earlier in my trip, the glitter did little to wow me. However, the murals manipulated so that they might mean something to the lost souls of Peru were spectacular, as well as a still-operable organ played by pulling wooden levers.
Our next stop was Raqchi, site of the largest Incan temple found thus far, and once an exclusive royal retreat. It was hard for me to imagine why a place of such importance would be situated there. Its placement in a wide valley made it easy for conquistadores to raze, but perhaps its position in the middle of the empire made it feel impregnable to the Inca. After that, it was lunch and a siesta in our seats before waking up to the creak and hiss of air brakes. All morning we’d been gradually ascending along the Altiplano (“high plain”), a tabletop tundra that ironically took us to our greatest Andean altitude. We pulled off of the highway for a brief photo opportunity at La Raya Pass, which at 14,232 feet, marked the highest spot I’ve ever been to on earth. Even the physically demanding apex of the Inca Trail (Dead Woman’s Pass) sits a whole 432 feet lower. Half-awake, with the mountain wind whipping my dry eyes, the fact that even at such a high point of my trip (pun intended) I really just wanted to get back on the bus made the whole thing feel anticlimactic.
Beyond the pass, in the northern basin of Lake Titicaca lies the polis of Pucara. Pucara proved interesting for me particularly because it sits on the remains of a pre-Inca civilization. When you’ve been inundated with the impressive impact of their ruins again and again, it’s easy to forget that in the span of human history, the Inca were relatively recent. Before integration into the greatest empire of pre-Columbian America, a plethora of peoples populated Peru. The Pucara were masters of pottery, and that skill survives today with the Toritos de Pucara, two ceramic bulls placed next to each other on a rooftop, often coupled with a cross. The talismanic figurines are popular throughout Peru and said to ward off evil spirits. The modest museum in the modern-day village displays fine examples of Pucara artisanship. There was a squat stone statue of their chieftain God, El Gran Degollador (The Great Decapitator). We were told not to take photos, but I was so captivated by it that I lagged behind the group, and found myself alone with him. So I did what any opportunist would do and snapped a picture. (Without flash of course…I’m not a monster.)
We arrived in Puno via Juliaca, a frightening looking place even from the perch of a tour bus. The glow of sunset gave off an ochre aura beyond the mountains shadowing the town. A rough and tumble port on the largest lake (by volume) in South America, this is where Peruvian sailors square off with the only naval vessels of landlocked Bolivia. Besides its naval history (Peruvian swabs train on Lake Titicaca like many USN cadets do on Lake Michigan) Puno also hosts a university full of disillusioned youth and a small but growing tourism industry. That said, it severely lacks the old world charm of Cuzco. The Chicago-like lakefront wind chill and its higher elevation makes Puno much colder than Cuzco, too.
But, as the old saying goes, nothing worth doing is easy – and I’d decided that visiting the floating islands was worth doing back when Nolan Ryan was still pitching. Most tourists who cruise Titicaca end up spending the night on one of two natural islands farther out in the lake, Amantani or Taquile. I’d heard that the Uros were overrun with isla-hopping gringos y gringas, but when given the opportunity to spend the evening on the “Bouncy Island Home” I’d seen more than a score of years before, I didn’t care. We wouldn’t know until two days later, but it turned out to be a good move.
After a nice dinner and a chilly night in a typical hotel room, we were met by a cabbie outside of our hotel. Instead of taking us to the port, where double-decker sightseeing boats were taking on passengers, the driver took us to a remote spit that had a discomforting resemblance to the Meadowlands spot where Paulie gets whacked by Clemenza in The Godfather (you know- the “Leave the gun, take the cannoli” scene). Through the bulrushes in a little white motorboat sat Victor, patriarch of the family-owned Uros Khantati homestay. Puttering along the narrow maze of channels cut through the tortora, it was already apparent that this was going to be a cool experience.
Stepping foot on the floating islands felt almost as otherworldly as bobbing in the Dead Sea. Remarkably, the only tourists we came upon were a German couple touring South America with their hyperactive 5 year-old twin boys, who seemed to be perpetually locked in fraternal fisticuffs. Thankfully, Victor ferried the rambunctious kinder and their courageous parents back to Puno. But before they left, they told us that if they’d known how nice it was going to be, they would’ve stayed another day. When Victor returned, he summoned us from the relaxation of our hammocks to his handmade tortora boat. The boats take a few months to build, and are now constructed with a hull full of plastic water bottles, in a brilliant example of recycling for the sake of better buoyancy. The tortora shell of the watercraft decays after about 18 months, but it’s just another part of a lifestyle that requires constant renewal through the use of the reeds. As I’ve already mentioned, the cut tortora reeds provide the material for not only the islands themselves, but the homes, boats, and bellies of the Uros. The reeds that have yet to be reaped provide a haven for the carachi, a small edible fish. Using a bamboo pole to push us through the shallows, Victor took us to his nets, and with each yard drawn from the water, we withdrew one or two trapped carachi. I was happy to help him re-lay the nets along the shoals, a little bit of manual labor I’m sure he has no problem passing off to tourists so they can say they went fishing in Lake Titicaca. Upon our return, we were presented with a lunch of fresh trout prepared by Christina, matriarch and “President” of Khantati Island, a portable pad not even an acre in area.
After our fishing excursion, we met our island-mates for the evening, a pair of twenty-something brothers from The Netherlands. Unfortunately, we only got to hang out with one of them, as the other was soon laid out with the sneaky soroche sickness. That night, we assembled for dinner, and Victor and Christina proudly told us about their heritage. Most of it was relayed in Spanish, but Jill made a great ad hoc translator. They began singing traditional songs in Aymara, the language of the Uros, and it wasn’t long before the lone guitar on the island was in my hands. Missing the high E string, it didn’t make much difference. We went through the only two common songs I could come up with: “El Condor Pasa” – the de facto national anthem of Peru, and one I was only familiar with because of the Simon and Garfunkel version – and “La Bamba.” The ensuing sing-a-long was yet another moment that will live long in my memory.
The temperatures that night dropped below freezing in the uninsulated hut walled with paper thin reeds. But we were provided with enough heavy alpaca blankets to maintain homeostasis, and anchor my feet to the bed like no hospital-cornered bed at the Ramada ever could. Waking up with a numb nose, I was reluctant to relinquish myself of the woolen weight and step into the cold. But we were ready to leave bright and early, because Victor had graciously offered to take us to a neighboring island and convince the captain of a passing tourist boat into giving us a couple of seats on a day sail to Taquile.
Most tourists make the floating islands a whistle-stop and chug on to overnight in Taquile or Amantani. Both islands are different from the Uros in the obvious fact that they are large, natural islands in the lake, and the not-so-obvious fact that the inhabitants of Taquile and Amantani do not speak Aymara (the language of the Uros) but Quechua (the language of the Inca). The slow trip from Uros Khantati was tedious, but tempered by the beauty of the dark blue waters surrounding us. It was nice to get out into the open lake, where the immensity of Titicaca truly takes shape. We were even able to espy the snow-capped mountains of Bolivia in the distance. But, sadly, Taquile was not as interesting as we’d hoped it would be. Despite the uniqueness of the community (Taquilenos are masters of handmade fabric, sport a Spanish peasant fashion left unchanged for centuries, and consider dogs and cats culinary delicacies), the island itself was disappointing. As nothing more than two of the daily tourist stock herded up and down the rocky slopes, we were more than ready to return to shore.
Once again, we arrived in Puno to an ochre twilight, but this time by water. We would be leaving the next day for Peru’s second city, Arequipa, then on to Lima and the plane that would finally bring me back home.
