back from Taquile!

What a trip. I just got back from Taquile, an island in the middle of Lake Titicaca. We stayed for two nights with a Quechua speaking family, and it was very intense. No electricity or running water, and lots of awkward language barriers. So we left Cusco early on Tuesday morning. We traveled all day to Puno, a small city on the edge of Lake Titicaca. We stopped three times, once to look at a beautiful church, and two other times to see ruins. We had a really annoying tour guide who was just a little bit older than us who talked to much and said "Ehhh?" at the end of all of his sentences. We sort of ignored him. We got to Puno around 7 or 8 at night. We stayed in a pretty nice hotel for the night, which had hot showers!! It was very exciting. We went out for a pizza dinner, delicious. There is this one street in Puno at night that is all lit up and touristy, and the lights are so bright that it feels like you are on a movie set, not on a real street. Puno is reaaally high up, and it was a little hard to breathe. Lake Titicaca is in fact the highest navigable lake in the world. Wednesday we got up early and took a boat three hours to the island of Taquile. We made a stop at the islands of the Uros, which is a group of Aymara-speaking people who made their own islands out of grass, basically. It is amazing, and probably the coolest thing I have ever scene. The floating islands are so strong and well built, and everything is made out of this one type of grass. It was amazing. So we got to Taquile around mid day, and it was sunny and hot, but cold in the shade. That's what high altitude will do, its nuts and confusing for my body. So Taquile is a pretty small island, but pretty high. We had to hike up about 500 steps with our huge backpacks on, and it was haaaaaaard. We finally made it to this clearing with a table and we were served delicious trucha (trout) and vegetable soup with quinua. The diet is very basic in Taquile, the residents pretty much just eat what they produce. We met our families, and two of us stayed per family. Margaret and I stayed with a great family. The father's name is Alejo, and his wife, Maria, passed away three years ago. He has three daughters and a son, and the oldest daughter has a beautiful baby named Nili. They fed us good food and we communicated the best we could with our choppy Quechua and their choppy Spanish. Margaret and I stayed in the same room, and a candle was our only light late at night. We were eating a dinner of soup and rice and egg and potatoes by candlelight and the three girls came in and bombarded us with a large mass of clothing! We were supposed to dress up in traditional Taquile garb for a dance that night. It was a ton of clothing, and it all looked pretty cool. The dance was great. A group of of men played panpipes, and there were a couple of guitars. We danced in a big circle, and then we danced in pairs. I danced with a three year old named Robin who was adorable and he loved to dance. We went to bed early, around 10, and were woken up the next day around 7. Our host dad told us that he gets up every morning at 1!!! Increible. We had a breakfast of quinua bread and tea and napped. The altitude really affects you. Margaret and I then hiked up to the ruins with Alejo, and we stayed there a while, chatting about the island. Afterwards we had lunch (more fish, yum) and another nap. We helped harvest some potatoes and oca (I never really figured out what it was, a kind of root?) for our dinner. It was really fun and satifying, I seriously think I want to be a farmer now. After that Margaret and I walked down to the water, looking for one of the two beaches on the island. We couldnt find them, but walked down to rocks and got splashed with the cold lake water. We walked back, had dinner, and were in bed by 7:30! Definetely the earliest I had been to bed in awhile. We got up at 5:30 today, hiked up and then down the other side of the island (exhuasting) and took a boat three hours to Puno. The weather was cool and the water was choppy, and Alison got sick on the boat, pobrecita. Once we got to Puno we bought some snacks and got on a bus for a full day trip back to Cusco. So here I am, exhuasted, but good. I actually am going salsa dancing for about an hour tonight, with Corina, a girl who works at Centro Tinku, the building where we have our classes. She is taking a bunch of us out to learn some moves. Phew! What a week. We have the weekend to rest and then on Tuesday we are going to Manu, a town in the rainforest. That trip is apparently even longer. Lots of travel. After Manu we have some days of rest and Vanessa (from Darien) is going to visit! wooo! I'm so excited to show her and her friends around the lovely city of Cusco. I think that's it. I need to eat and rest before dancing. Here are some pics:

The weekend before we left for Taquile we went to a party thrown by Braddy, the artist who worked with us and helped us make teeshirts. He served fresh caught trucha, chicken, and really good potatoes.



Joseph and I stayed later and hung out with some of Braddy's friends. They were really nice and I lot of them were artists so I talked to one girl about my idea for my ISP (Independent Study Project) about art in Cusco. She had a lot to say and was really interested in helping me.



This is what the Island of the people of Uros looked like.



Dressed up in traditional garb with the boys from the program:



Me and Marge, representing and looking sexy:



And finally, the beautiful view from our host family's house in Taquile:



That's all! I hope I am not exhausting you all with stories and pictures. Are the photos showing up massive on your computers too? I'm trying to fix it. Well, more later! Ciao