Juli

After a fieldtrip at a town called Juli about 25km from where we live, where Andrés interviewed people selling Cañiwa at the market, we decided to hike up one of the hills surrounding the town. We hiked up a hill called the Sleeping Lion (León Dormido). We reached 4075m, around 200m above Juli. There was a really nice view of Lake Titicaca from the top, and of a village lying on some sort of delta, where we were told there was a large market for cocaine, before Fujimori (Peruvian president 1990-2000) partially removed it. Because of this market there are some very rich people living there. I read a book of an anthropologist who studied fishermen at Lake Titicaca, where he visited a ‘cocaine village' and was escorted from and back to the border of the village by heavily armed guards. Probably not a village we’re going to visit. 

More from Alpaccollo

To know more precisely where we are, click here, to see where we are on google maps.
And a couple of pictures too:

Our house is the one with red roof on the left.

Just by our place, there is a small pond, full of birds and toads that together form a peculiar choir.

Our home in Peru for a few weeks

Alpaccollo:

Instead of going to La Paz on Sunday the 8th as planned, Andrés got some good contacts in several villages, so we stayed in Peru and moved to an office building in a small village. This is our home for a few weeks, and then we plan to go further up in the mountains where Cañiwa (the crop Andrés is studying) is grown. While we’re here Andrés will interview people at marketplaces who sell Cañiwa and possibly also go to a village that processes Cañiwa in a stone mill. More about that later.

We have already bought Cañihuacu at the market, and as soon as we find a cow in the village from which we can buy milk, we’ll be starting our mornings with a warm Cañihuacu drink. Cañiwa is a very nutrious grain filled with proteins among other things, so apparently a bowl Cañihuacu milk would be enough for breakfast here – and they eat huge portions of food in this area!

We also bought a 5liter gas tank and a small stove, because this place is without kitchen, warm water and wifi – only a slow ethernet internet. Moreover, they wash the wooden floors here with petrol!! So one morning, after I had a night with a sick stomach, they changed the room next to ours into a gas chamber! I was ready to jump in and safe the guy cleaning the room if he stopped breathing, because that’s how I felt, like either not breathing the toxic air or throwing up. But it seemed normal for them to do a thing like this. I got Andrés to tell them not to wash our floor before we have left the village.

Here are a few pictures of the area where we live. 

This is the place where we live. Our room is in the building to the left. 

The rainy season is upon us, with awesome hale and thunder storms. We hope to hike the mountain seen in the distance one day. 

A boat trip on Lake Titicaca

Los Uros:

While we were in Puno and Andrés was taking a relaxing day to take care of his altitude sickness, I went on a boat trip on Lake Titicaca to visit an island made completely of totora reeds. The people on these islands are called Uros, they put layers and layers of totora reeds on top of each other to make an island, and they anchor the island to the bottom of the lake, so they don’t flow to Bolivia, as they told us at their presentation of their lifestyle. Their houses and boats are made of the reeds and they eat them as well, which apparently are very healthy and cause the Uros to hardly ever become sick. 

The leader of the village presented a miniature version of their island and how it is made.

The women and children performed a song for us. 

We took a boat ride on one of their boats made of totora reeds. See how small their island is. 

They sold woven blankets which contained stories of their lives. 

The kids had summer holidays at the time. They usually go to a school on another island. 

Taquile:

Later on we went to another island calle Taquile. Now this was the day after my sunburn incident and I was still feeling the altitude. So as the sun grew stronger in the middle of the day and we had to hike to the top of the hill of the island to the restaurant where our lunch awaited, I felt the fatigue upon me. I had been a bit nervous whether I would survive this day, with sunburn, tiredness and the altitude. But the other people on the trip were so fun and friendly even though I couldn’t communicate much with them. But we still had conversations with a mixture of hand gestures, Spanish, English and French. I’m certain God blessed me that day and gave me an awesome trip in spite of it all. 

Because the Spanish chopped down many of the trees during their conquest several hundred years ago, to use in the mines, many of the original slow-growing trees have been depleted and instead mostly foreign faster-growing varieties are seen in the area. As you can see on this picture, the island is packed with Eucalyptus trees. I almost felt like ‘home’ (if I could call Australia home). 

Photos from Arequipa

Arequipian weaver

Plaza de Armas in Arequipa

Plaza de Armas

The volcano Misti could be seen through the clouds, just for a moment.

The volcano Chachani during the few minutes it was visible

Cheap food and nice view

The perks of being a Dane 3800m above sealevel

These last three days have been our training for living 3800m above sea level (3900 where our hostel is), and we've been learning it the hard way. We thought a day in Arequipa at 2300m was adjustment enough for the altitude in Puno, but we were wrong. And I think a Dane like myself has especially many lessons to learn about high altitude living, considering one of our highest peaks is 147m above sealevel and we call it the Heaven Mountain. 

Our first day in Puno was for Andrés spent at a conference without much water to drink, or sleep the previous night, and for me it was spent lying in the hammock eating watermelon - see the picture in my previous post. So I was rested and hydrated, but I was also a Dane hungry for sunlight after several weeks of cloudy winter days in Denmark. So, forgetting the fewer layers of atmosphere for the sun to reach through up here, as well as my winter pale skin, I got a pretty bad sunburn on my whole front side, except for my face which had 50+ sunscreen (at least I had some sense!). Poor Andrés came late back to the hostal with a bad headache, sick stomach and slight fever. I didn't know what to do with altitude sickness other than drinking coca tea. So I asked Luz the hostal owner, a really cool and friendly girl, who has grown up with the knowledge of the Altiplano about treatment of altitude sickness. She helped us so much! She went out to buy muño which is a plant that is sniffed to alleviate the sickness, and came up and made us sniff it, massaged Andrés with another traditional remedy, struck him several times on his shoulders, head and neck with my sleeping bag liner held tightly between her hands, put a warm beanie on his head and a cold cloth on his forhead, and Andrés was soon fast asleep. I was lying awake next to him half of the night because I could only lie on my back, with a mixture of chills and burning skin. What a pitiful couple we were! But lessons learned now! Next time we go from sealevel to a high plateau we will ascend slowly over many days! And from now on the sunscreen 50+ will be applied to more than just my face, if I at all will lie several hours in a hammock in the sun at 3900m.
Now three days later we still have slight headaches, become breathless after walking up the steep hill to the hostal and my hand and arm are swollen - which Wikipedia says are common symtpoms. But in a few days we will probably be free from this 'mal de altura' even though La Paz is also above 3800m.

Last minute update: We are staying in Perú a while longer and not going to La Paz tomorrow.

The long road to Puno

After 4 long days we have finally arrived at our destination at ciudad del lago, Puno. Except for lack of sleep, our travels have been better than we expected. We had no problems at 'George Bush Airport' at Houston, even though we only had 2 hours, and the line for immigration (or whatever it's called) was endless because everyone has to provide fingerprints and so on to the U.S., and the immigrations officer told us we would be stopped by all the security officers we met if we went the shortest way to our airplane gate (which was already boarding at that moment). However, we chose the shortest way and were not stopped by a single officer, and made it in time for our flight. The airplane food on United Airlines was surprisingly tasty (and vegan): chickpeas and curry rice. For me food is what adds to travelling extra adventure and 'hygge', so you might hear more about that part of our travels in the next months. 

When we came to Lima at midnight two days ago, we called Andrés friend to let him know we had arrived, but found out they had misunderstood each other and the friend was in the jungle far away from Lima, unable to pick us up. So we prepared to stay the night at the airport, but Andrés' friend made arrangements for us to stay at his sister's place in Lima. So luckily we had a comfortable place to sleep - he and his sister were both very helpful to us! And that night's sleep was very much needed because the next two nights we slept in busses, while we drove along the coast of Peru to Arequipa, and then on to Puno. It was awesome to drive through the desert landscapes of southern Peru bordering the Pacific Ocean, with occasional rice fields growing along rivers that flow into the ocean. Arequipa is a nice place to go as a tourist with a lot of old buildings and beautiful views to the three volcanoes surrounding the city. We went to the 'mummy' museum in Arequipa, which had a frozen 500-year-old mummified body of a girl found buried on top of a 6000m high volcano close to Arequipa. Another body of a teenage girl, called Juanita, also found at that volcano, was unfortunately out on a research trip. But she is the most well-preserved of several Inca offerings found at that volcano, almost completely preserved by the ice. They were offerings to the Inca gods at the volcano, who were chosen as infants to be educated at Cuzco, and the most intelligent and beautiful of them were chosen to engange on a long journey along the Andes to this volcano to be sent to be among the gods. A horrible fate for these young people, but at least it seems like they didn't suffer much physical pain, being intoxicated for most of the journey, and probably filled with notions of pride, having the prospect of becoming a god. At least all this is what the museum guide told us.

Today we arrived in Puno at 5am and met an already awakened city, and were already able to get our hostel room because 'ofcourse' the hostel hosts were up - it was already 5:30am! We had tried finding couchsurfers here, but out of the 40 I wrote to we got about 3 answers, one of them saying he already had 15 friends visiting at this time of the Fiesta de la Candelaria and that we would be lucky if we even could find a hostel, since Puno has been recognized as a UNESCO world heritage sight. 

So here at 3830m height I am sitting on the roof of the hostel in a hammock, eating watermelon I bought on my morning walk, while Andrés is at the agricultural conference he has to attend these few days. I hope he's not suffering from altitude-sickness as much as my headache is reminding me that we are at the highest lake in the world (navigable lake, that is). Maybe I should drink some more coca tea...