Puno is a tiny crowded city filled with dingy narrow sidewalks, gaudy noisy taxicabs, and not much to do or see. Last night, moments after publishing the latest blog entry in a rundown internet boiler room (there's no other word for this place, "café" would imply comfort or service) surrounded by screaming teenagers playing first-person shooters ("Matalo! Matalo!"), the power went out in like seven square blocks. This morning, before 6, I was awakened by the sound of what I can only assume was a cannon repeatedly firing, only pausing to reload long enough in between so that I could almost fall back to sleep. I've never seen so many cars with loud-speakers mounted on their roofs. In the twenty-eight hours I've been here, I've seen three different street protests, one for the rights of farmers to grow coca, one for teacher labor rights, and the third one I just couldn't quite figure out.
Here's (part of) a group of people I found standing on a street corner at 11 AM on a Wednesday, staring at the job board.
This afternoon I ran out of coca leaves so I went out to buy some in a local shop. Three different shopkeepers turned me down ("we have the powder..." "would you like the sweets?") sending me deeper and deeper into the seedy, tourist-free part of the city searching for the real thing. Granted, there was something that appealed to me about buying a huge bag of green leaves from a sketchy oddly-dressed lady for about 35 cents.
So then why, do you ask, visit such an awful place?
That's why.
The world's highest navigable body of water, South America's largest lake, inducer of adolescent giggles around the globe, you know her, you love her, ladies and gentlemen, Lake Titicaca!
According to Andean legend, Viracocha, the creator deity, brought the sun, the moon, and the stars out of this lake to lighten a dark world, and create civilization.
The Incans believed that this guy, Manco Cápac, the original Incan chieftain and a direct descendant of the sun, rose from the waters with his sister to found the Incan Empire. In the lower right hand corner of this picture you can see Maxo Cápac, the original Drinkin' chieftain. (Oh, and I hope Memo and Pilar are still together, because they ruined my picture.)
Another great place to see the lake from is the Mirador Kundur Wasi, the highlight of which is a ginormous metal condor.
I should mention that the part of the lake you can see in these pictures is only the massive bay that Puno sits on, the lake actually covers some 3200 square miles, a lot of that in Bolivia. Though I understand that Peruvians like to point out that on most maps, the Titi is in Peru, and the Caca is in Bolivia.
But more on Titicaca (tee-hee!) later.
1 comment:
I am Janene's mother and have always wanted to see Lake Titicaca and in spite of buying coca tea in Cuzco I never made it. The altitude is just too much for these old bones. Love your pictures.
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