Megann's Blog: Peru (day ten)

The magnificent travels of Megannn Phillips: a journal

Day 10 in Peru

March 24, 2013

Amantaní: the journey
before the home-stay

     
  "Wow" is the best word with which I can describe the island of
Amantaní. We arrived here today by boat, via an eight o'clock voyage
across the vast waters of Lake Titicaca. The boat provided the sort of
tour-type setting that I normally would have liked to avoid, but it was the
least expensive and least scheduled and least guided transport that Cara could
find at the dock in Puno. Regardless, it was a good experience; there wasn't an
overly excessive amount of
"guiding" on the boat, and after arriving on the island of Amantaní,
the man who so good-heartedly informed us about the Lago Titicaca (Titicaca,
literally meaning stone puma in the Aymara language) and managed our schedule
of visitation in the Uros Islands on the way to Amantaní, all but
disappeared. 

     
  After disembarking our vessel at the dock in Amantaní, we were
immediately matched with a host family with whom we would
spend tonight with. Dad, Cara, and I, along with two French girls,
followed a chubby, kind-faced woman in traditional dress, named Flora, back to
her home. 

        The walk there was absolutely
beautiful. Everywhere, there were crops growing, separated from one another by
seemingly unstable fences made if stacked gray stones. I noticed there were odd
plastic bags tied to the tops of many of the growing plants, and upon asking
about this oddity at dinner later in the day, was told by Flora that it
protected ripening quinoa from hungry birds. Aside from the crops, along the
fence lines and throughout the fields, wildflowers grow everywhere; mostly
yellow and purple. From any point on the island, I can vaguely see ancient Inca
terraces, laced with more recently laid cobblestone or dirt trails, the
occasional awkward tree, and the lake in all of its glory stretching endlessly
in at least one or two directions.

     
  We arrived at Flora's house around sunny noon. Before walking through
the front gates, I hadn't known what to expect; for all I knew, I would be
spending the night on a dirt floor with a straw-stuffed pillow and going to the
bathroom in an old hole behind the house. We hadn't booked a stay with our host
family through any tour agency, after all; the discussion forums on the
Internet seemed to predict we would be living for a day in a more rudimentary setting
for taking this option. 

        In reality, however, Flora's house is
like a very small, family-run hostel. There are three small rooms pre-prepared
for guests, and a little blue flag hung proudly on a wall outside, which proclaims
la casa as official and certified for tourist stay. The house is two stories
tall, with a rose- and wildflower-filled courtyard whose entrance is marked by
a little red gate. There is a kitchen (in which we were served both a delicious
multi-course traditional lunch and a delicious multi-course traditional dinner)
and a bathroom without running water slightly separated from the main rooms,
but still inside the walls of the quaint, red-gated compound. (I had to pour
buckets full of water into the toilet bowl in order to mimic a flush in the
bathroom, but that wasn’t so bad.) 

        Oh, and there were also kittens with
tiny, sunburned ears!

Madeline and the
kittens

     
  The youngest of Flora's three daughters (I haven’t really met the older
two, although I did partially watch a volleyball game they participated in for
ten minutes or so), Madeline is so sweet and beautiful. Eight years old, she
sort if reminds me of little Ryann, with her goofy sense of humor and jolly,
enthusiastic attitude and her crooked front teeth. She was wearing a
traditional brightly colored skirt and waist wrap just like her mother's when I
met her, and I think we bonded a bit over the kittens. 

        I know very well that my Spanish could
do with some improvement, but when talking to a child of Madeline's age, one
doesn't need an advanced vocabulary; I asked her about the kittens: How old are
they? Do they have names? Which one is your favorite? As it turns out, the
kittens were about eight weeks old, and she did have a favorite, and her
favorite kitten was the only kitten with a name. (There were three orange
kittens and one gray kitten, named Jongjong, who was her gatito favorito.) She
played with him so fondly, waving around a long piece of grass for him to
chase, carelessly hugging him over and over again despite his protests. She was
altogether adorable and endearing.

Dad's sick

     
  We think Dad must have eaten some bad fish or something at dinner last
night, because he has had some explosive diarrhea since then. He's not feeling
himself at all-- He was holed up in one of the three comfortable tiny beds in
the room we are calling ours for the next day or so, since almost the moment Flora
walked us through her door. Dad is as miserable as Cara was at the beginning of
the trip, when she came down with altitude sickness in Cusco. 

        I practically forced him to swallow
some the anti-diarrheal medication that Mom insisted I take with me to Peru
"just in case". Luckily, I haven't needed those pills yet (and
chances are, I won't need them at all, since our trip is almost drawing to a
close now).

Hiking to Pachatata's
Temple

     
  Only Cara and I did the hike to Pachatata's temple since dad wasn't
feeling well. My instincts tell me, though, that he may have given up the trail
to the temple half way through even had
he been ready and healthy to enjoy the day. It was uphill and surprisingly difficult…

        Guided by Flora's husband, we walked
with a couple of other tourists to the summit if Isla Amantaní, where the
ancient Incas had built a temple to Pachatata (Father Earth). There is another
temple, too, built to Pachamama (Mother Earth), a half hour's hike or so from
Pachatata's temple, but Flora's husband elected not to take us there today;
instead, we watched the sun set from El Templo de Pachatata. The only
redemption for this missed opportunity lies in the fact that, like the Temple
of Pachatata, the Temple of Pachamama is most likely guarded with locked gates,
leaving us unable to step inside. 

        Flora's husband said that the gates are
unlocked only once a year: on the third Thursday of January. On that day, five
communities on the island feast and give offerings inside El Templo de
Pachatata, and five communities feast and give offerings at El Templo de
Pachamama; afterwards, the ten communities dance and celebrate along the paths
that connect both temples, meeting in the middle. I would have love to have
been here to see that ceremony… It sounds so incredible.

A side note about los templos

     
  Side note: It's fitting that both Pachamama's and Pachatata's temples
are built on Amantaní because they are said to be the mother and father of all
the world, and the world's contents are, according to Inca folklore, supposed
to have risen from the depths of Lake Titicaca. 

Another side note:
Amantaní is rumored to have mystic powers of love and healing. I bet this has
something to do with the world's origin coming from this place...

Things I learned at
the dinner table

     
  Around the dinner table, after the hike, Cara and I and the French
girls chatted some with Flora in Spanish. I learned some interesting things
about life on Amantaní through the things she said, and from the way she
reacted to some of the things we said.

1) Flora had never heard
if the country Vietnam. One of the two French girls was of Asian descent, and
when Flora asked her where she was from, she could hardly believe the answer
was France. "You seem like you're Japanese," she said. We all
laughed, and the girl (Her name was Lama) told Flora that her history was Vietnamese.
Flora proceeded to struggle to pronounce the word in a confused manner, and then
continued to call her Japanese.

2) Flora struggled,
also, with the word stepmother (even in Spanish: madrastre). She knew nothing
of the concept of divorce between married couples; when we explained that Cara
was Dad's wife (this was much less complicated and controversial than
explaining that Cara is, in fact, my dad’s girlfriend), but not my mother, she
asked what had happened to my mother as if she had died. I replied, "Mi madre vive en Los Estados Unidos, y a veces yo vivo
con ella, y a veces yo vivo con mi padre y Cara." She looked astounded
but, surprisingly, not horrified.

3) Flora speaks in
Quechua only with her husband, not with her children. Apparently, she does not
want them to learn the language-- only Spanish, like they learn in school. Her
three girls only speak limited amounts of Quechua with their grandparents.

A billboard announcing our arrival in Puno on March 23

We arrived at the dock early on the morning of March 24 in order to catch our boat out of Puno.

Looking out along the shorline...

An elderly man and woman rowing their way to some unknown destination

Once our lake-faring vessel set course, I rushed to the upper deck. I seated myself just behind the waving Peruvian flag, and found myself with fantastic panorama views of Titicaca.