Diarios de Peru- 3

Aymara Women in top hats ride Alpacas in the Altiplano

The title of this chapter is potentially misleading. All senior señoras in the largely indigenous hinterland of the Peruan highlands wear top hats, and this would include both Aymara and Quechua speaking people.  I wonder how these grey very European looking hats came to adapted by Peruanas, but it almost looks like with colorful skirts (replete with floral patterns) around their generous hips and long top hats sitting on their oily pigtailed hair, these old matriarchs with heavily lined weatherbeaten faces, are out to outrage the fine sensibilities of some Victorian lady.

Peru's highlands are either mountains or plateau, locally called the Altiplano.  The latter presents a curious spectacle.  They are high flat empty areas where the vista extends for miles around, uninterrupted except for by a cottage here or a grazing flock of alpaca there, covered in grass in summer, wild flower in patches, only lichen and moss in winter, the sky is speckless azure, the hot sun beats down, and the cold wind blows in powerful gusts uninhibited by trees and rocks as you struggle to breathe in the thin air.  Once in a while you will find a lake or a pool in a volcanic depression, that reflects the deep blue of the sky, and things look unbelievably placid and pretty.  The Aymara people have called the Altiplano their home for centuries and eke out a tenuous existence grazing camelids and farming what little is possible. Lake Titicaca, the highest of the great lakes in the world, is the most notable lake here and was on the top of my list of things to see. Peru shares the altiplano and the lake with neighboring Bolivia and you can see that for all its stunning scenery the whole area is impoverished with little by way of economic activity.       

 The base of my excursions into the Titicaca region was Puno, the Peruan port on the great lago. Puno is a remarkably ugly town, with one-story naked brick houses stacked on top of each other on a hill, probably looking like the usual South American barrio (poor neighborhood)  but the comparison that came to my mind immediately - was a small town in Bihar or eastern UP. The touristy destinations in the Lago are Islas de Sol y Lunes ( two beautiful islands on the Bolivian side of the lake) and the floating islands of the Uros people (these  "islands"  were built by people out of bundles of reeds).  Not having the time or the resources for these exoticities, I decided to visit the chullpas of Sillustani instead.  What happened there was one of the high points of the trip, as I happened to discover a lake by chance, and I quote straight from my notes, 

"the stunning Lago Umayo in the Peruvian altiplano (close to Titicaca), is a huge crater lake that is ringed by mountains, and has a surreal looking island sticking out in the middle. I hiked up a hill meaning to see some ancient ruins called chullpas that are found in this region (Sillustani), not knowing at all what would be behind it, and suddenly came across this fascinating vista that no camera could capture. The panorama was a reflex angle, there were clouds, a bit of sun, a bit of shade, casting reflections on the placid water of the lake that shimmered a good five hundred feet below, while somber mountains stood guard all around. I wouldn't dare to steal a boat in such a place."

That evening was spent in a ramshackle cybercafe in Puno chatting with friends far away.  I told them I was talking to them from the shores of Lake Titicaca and that thrilled them a little. Now I again interrupt my narrative to give you another valuable travel tip.  

I met this bossy Korean girl in a hostel in the course of my travels in the Altiplano.  She was a US-based grad student like me, and was on a monthlong trip through South America (yes Koreans do not need visas to travel to most places because like the Americans and Europeans, they are rich people).  She was surprised by the size of my backpack.  She showed her small backpack to me and how she had folded her clothes very compactly to fit into it, and even a  cute pink heart-shaped pillow she had managed to fit into that small cavernous pouch of hers. She expressed some interest in traveling with me the next day, but I quietly slipped out very early next morning when she was fast asleep.  Annoying though she was, it is good advice to travel light, especially when on long trips.  And you should be prepared to do laundry once a week at least if you don't want to be saddled with piles of underwear. Maybe I should have traveled with the wise little Korean woman after all.. Or facebooked her. She was cute in a way.  Also I lied in the title.  Nobody rides alpacas. They are too delicate.  But you can eat them. It tastes somewhere in between lamb and beef.