Puno, Peru – February 10 -13, 2011

We left the Colca Valley at 7 a.m. and headed out of the canyon by the same route we had arrived. This time it was sunny at the top, the 4910 meter level, and we had a reasonably clear view of the surrounding volcanoes. One of the volcanoes was where Juanita was found and the other volcano was the one that erupted when Juanita rolled from her thawed frozen tomb. (If you don’t know what I’m referring to you’ll have to go read my Arequipa blog.) There was snow all over the ground and someone had taken the time to build a snow man as well. Of course we had to take pictures. There were also hundreds of stone innukshuks (sp) all around the area so it looked like really ragged volcanic landscape. And of course they have a different name for these figures but I don’t remember what that was. Five minutes before or after that point the snow was gone.

We then saw some vizcacha, which are short eared rabbits (by our description or a cross between a rat and a rabbit. We also saw flamingoes and other birds in the wet areas and lots of alpaca, llamas and vicunas out in the fields. We stopped at the same tea spot as when we came in so I had another cup of triple tea. Again you have to read a different blog to find out what the tea is and why one drinks it – probably the Colca Canyon blog as that’s where we were heading last time. The market was open so some folks went shopping. A couple of alpacas strolled by where we were sitting having our tea and then proceeded into the market area where no one even blinked an eye so it’s obviously a regular occurrence.

Back on the bus we had Spanish lessons again because after Puno we have a homestay coming up and our families will not speak any English. It should be interesting trying to communicate as my Spanish is pretty limited. We will be on an island in Lake Titicaca at the time and the people there speak Spanish now but their native language is the third official language of Peru along with Spanish and Quechan but I don’t’ remember the name right now.

The landscape continued to be flat and dry and rocky with just small cactus and short grass growing. Further from the road there were rolling hills that also looked dry and barren. Beyond that we could, when the cloud cover was right, see high mountain peaks some covered with snow. For most of the trip we had the trail track right beside us but we never saw a train so I’m not sure how much it is actually used. The road is very good and appears to be quite new. I’d like it better if it had wider shoulders. The passing would seem so scary if you knew you had a bit more leeway if you did meet another vehicle. You’d also have a good space to pull off on to if you had car trouble. As it is it is just two lanes and nothing more before you hit the rocky dirt or the drainage canal beside the road. At least there are no big drops off the side so I guess I should be thankful for that.

We drove for miles without ever seeing a home or village and then when the villages appeared they were very small with few buildings over one storey and most of them just mud brick and stone. Small shops lined the highway and sold everything imaginable from pop and snacks to kitchen sinks. Usually there was only a street or two off of the highway so the villages were very compact. There is no farmland nearby so I assume they raise animals and then sell their wares in the markets for a living.

Eventually we got into the more rolling hills and things looked a bit greener. At one point there was a sign for 4,500 metres so we’re still pretty high. We stopped at a rest stop with brand new toilets so that was nice. They cost one soles but toilet paper was provided. That’s amazing around here and all for about 30 cents. The view was also spectacular. We were on a low hillside that rolled down to a small lake and then up the other side to rolling hills will snow capped mountains in the background. And just to top it off there was a market for more shopping. Shortly after we pulled over again to take pictures of some flamingoes and cormorants in the lake.

The greener hillside is creating a different landscape and different agriculture. There are large herds of animals in the fields and that includes cows and sheep with the llamas and alpacas. The farm homes are occurring more readily and all of them have a bright blue outhouse, although we did see one that was green. The homes are sometimes just mud and stone and built against the hillside. Others are more elaborate and include several homes and many stone corrals. Some of the homes have plywood on the outside – some of which is painted and some of which obviously came from somewhere else as there are ads and signs, often upside down or sideways, on the sides of the buildings. Many of the homes have thatched roofs while others are tin. There are nice littler streams running through the fields as well, just to add to the picture.

We eventually got to the point where we had trees again and the towns were much larger in size. The buildings were mainly brick with tile roofs and they were almost all two storeys high. They don’t look big but I assume this is the size they are used to and perhaps they are bigger inside than they look. The stores are the usual variety. There are many more wet places around the landscape now and many more homes and corrals. Each farm has more buildings now and there seems to be more agricultural activities. Some of the fields are obviously planted but I can’t figure out what the crop is. Most of the land is still just grazing for the animals as there are still a lot of them around.

We then went back into a flatter area and lost the taller trees. Now we have more people around and can see people building their mud brick homes. In fact you can see people building what look like kilns and all have one side open and frequently have smoke coming from them. We don’t know whether there are a lot of independent people making bricks or if they are just making their own or what. There is also a lot of garbage around some areas and it’s not a pretty sight.

We reached Juliaca which was a much larger centre and has the only airport in the region and a main train station. There are 200,000 inhabitants and the main activity is business of buying and selling. There was a festival going on and the main square was full of people and there was a band playing. Some of the costumes on the street were absolutely beautiful. Two of them were in gold and really stood out. Others are in colourful dresses and many are wearing bowler hats. There were vans all over the place and I assume they were the local taxis going in every direction. There were also tuk tuks if you wanted a private ride. The buildings were all brick many had several floors but no more than five or six. There were large playing fields and stadiums and very nice looking schools. As we left we seemed to be in an industrial area or at least an area quite different than the downtown business district. In one building they sold Mazda, Ford, Hyundai and another that I can’t remember right now. At the very end of the town was a large, new university complex that said it offered 19 professions but didn’t say which ones.

Outside of town the green fields returned. Cows were tethered at the side of the road. Some were actually given green hay or something to eat despite the fact they are standing in a green area. Three men were out hoeing a field and you could certainly see where they had been so they were doing a great job. Another man was out plowing with his oxen. I couldn’t see how well he was doing but he was working hard.

Eventually we arrived in Puno, a town of over 150,000 on the shore of Lake Titicaca at 3,820 metres above sea level. Puno is the dividing city between two of the official languages: Quechan in the north and Aymara in the south. The main economic activities are agriculture and tourism. Agricultural products are barley, potatoes, quinoa, milk, cheese and alpaca farming. Silver mines were very important and people were forced by the Spanish to work the mines. The Spanish gave the worker coca leaves to keep them working longer hours. In November 1668 the Spanish founded Puno or San Carlos de Puno in honour of Carlos II, King of Spain. Puno is 3,810 metres above sea level and about 4.5 hours from La Paz, Bolivia.

Puno has two universities with one free public university offering 42 programs and serving over 20,000 students. The other university is private and very expensive. According to our tour guide, only the students whose parents are smugglers can afford to go there. Apparently Bolivia has no taxes so people go across Lake Titicaca to guy goods and bring them back to Puno for sale in the Mercado Negro, which is a well established and perfectly legitimate market.

Puno is having a big festivity this week in honour of the virgin of Candalin (sp). It is always the first full week of February so we are just catching the end of it. Throughout the week there are parades, dancing, traditional costumes, fireworks and music. We caught a lot of the parades in time we were in Puno. They seemed to be small groups who just marched around the streets non-stop playing music and dancing, some in costumes, and carrying their honoured virgin. It was fun to see but definitely disrupted traffic, even pedestrian traffic.

After arriving in Puno we took a walking tour around the city to get our bearings. I then took off and went to see the Cathedral and the Church of San Antonio. The Cathedral was right on the main town square, Plaza de Armas, and it was a light brick colour with two main towers. The inside was also brick with altars along each side and a large stone altar at the font. It was very nice but nothing fancy. The Church of San Antonio was much smaller but the front altar in it was elaborately decorated with banners above the main statue. I wondered if this wasn’t perhaps the Virgin of Candalina, that we were honouring this but there was a service going on so I couldn’t get any further information. The inside of the church was white and very plain with blue pillars and ribbing. The stain glass windows at the top were round and yellow/green, yellow/blue, etc. and shed a neat light on the white walls. The main square was quite large with a statue, benches and garden areas but didn’t’ have a lot of large important buildings around it as is the usual case.

I went from the churches to the Carlos Dreyer Museum. By this time it was raining so it was good to be inside. Carlos Dreyer was an artist and collector who lived in the area for 30 years. He donated the building and its exhibits to the museum. The building may have been his home but I was unsure about that. There were eight rooms in the museum but they were very small so the whole museum only took about an hour. The exhibits covered the Nazca, Chimu, Chancay, Paracas, Pukara, Tiahuanaco, Curacazgos and Inca cultures. There was pottery, textiles, sculptures, jewelry, paintings and religious artifacts. One room displayed over 500 gold pieces from the Sillustani. It was very impressive. The gold was taken from the Sillustani funerary towers that were located about 30 miles from Puno. Three human remains from the tower were also displayed in this room. The whole museum was interesting but there were no signs in English so it was a bit hard to follow the specifics. After the museum I went back to the hotel and met the others for dinner and then we were in bed early for our early departure for our cruise on Lake Titicaca in the morning.

On the 12th, when we returned to Puno from our cruise on Lake Titicaca, some of us took a trip to Sillustani to see the funerary towers. They are built on a peninsula of a small lake and of course they are up at the top of a hill that we had to climb. There were Inca funerary towers that were made of huge smooth cut stones placed in a circular formation and built about 25 feet high. There were many of them on the peninsula but few were in good condition. Most had at least one side caved in or the top now supported by metal strapping. The site also included many pre Incan funerary towers that were just piles of rocks in a large igloo shape. These were built by another culture but not many years before the Inca. It was amazing to see how different and vastly improved the Inca techniques were. The towers, of both types, covered a very large area so it was obviously a very important burial ground. Only the rich and famous and important people were buried in such towers. Normal people were just buried under ground.

On the way back from this tour we stopped at one of the farm houses for a quick visit. It was a mud brick compound with triple entrance gates and two separate sections within. We never heard what the first section was for but we wondered if the smaller animals came in at night. The inner section had five separate buildings of different sizes, some round and some square. One small round one was piled about five feet high with cow patties that they use as fuel. Another of the buildings was obviously sleeping quarters. It was much larger, rectangular in shape, and had a large bed at both ends. Another slightly smaller building was the kitchen. There was a clay oven both inside and outside for cooking. The one outside was much larger. The cupboard in the kitchen made me think of Old Mother Hubbard as it was just one shelving unit with about three shelves and most of them seemed bare. Mainly they seemed to have flour, sugar and various other grains as well as a few cans and bottles like condensed milk and oil. Obviously they do not store a lot of things but rather get them fresh daily. The other buildings were closed so we did not go in. It seemed like a very nice comfortable place except for the dirt floor and animals, both of which would produce too much dirt for my liking. Oh yes, I mustn’t forget that they had llamas and alpacas out front for us to take pictures of, and they had guinea pigs inside. And they had ceramic bulls on most of the buildings and on their gates as bulls bring good luck. I should also mention that the guinea pigs are considered Peruvian x-rays. If you are sick you put the guinea pig on you and it will absorb the illness. Once removed, the guinea pig is killed and examined to find the exact problem and then the patient is treated accordingly. It doesn’t make sense to me but what do I know? My doctoral studies didn’t include guinea pigs as x-rays.

Back in town we went to the Coca Museum. The first part of the tour was watching a video about native dances. The room also had various costumes on display for these dances. After that we actually got into the coca exhibit. By the time you had read everything it was clear that the coca plant could cure anything. It even mentioned the fact that Coca-Cola used actual coca in its recipe originally. Once the cocaine drug connection was made, they changed the formula. Generally speaking though, it seemed like coca (not cocaine, which has to go through a whole other process, was a valuable drug tot eh Peruvians and others who needed more energy at the high altitude. It was only one room but it was very well presented AND it was in English as well as Spanish so that was an added bonus.

Now I mustn’t forget to say that after we returned from Lake Titicaca at noon and before we left for the Sillustani tour, I took another small trip in town. I walked from the hotel to the start of the steps to the Condor Lookout and then climbed the 590 steps straight up to the top to get a view of Puno and Lake Titicaca. The climb took me a very long time as it was very hot and sunny and it was very hard breathing at the altitude. I think I was stopping about every 30 steps at one point. Just getting to the start of the stairs was challenging enough as it was basically all uphill from our hotel. Anyway, after a lot of panting and many stops I did reach the top. It was over an hour from bottom to top and I only had two hours to spare so I quickly took my pictures and started the downhill climb. The view, by the way, was quite spectacular looking over Puno and Lake Titicaca. Going down was much easier from a breathing perspective but it was certainly hard on my knees. Near the bottom, as I’m grunting and groaning, I meet two Peruvians going up and each was carrying a 50 pound bag of flour. How do they do it? There were houses all along the route so I’m not sure how far they had to go. It certainly wouldn’t be to the top but it still seemed like a lot of work to me. I also should add that had I known how much of a climb there was at Sillustani I might not have done this climb as well.

After the museum we went back to the hotel for a few minutes and then went out to dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Parque Pino. It was delicious and probably the best meal I’ve had. Tomorrow we are away from our hotel at 7:30 to go to the bus station for an 8 a.m. bus to Cuzco, a 6.5 hour ride.