Uros Floating Islands
Piggies on an island
Presidente demonstrating island building
Presendente's casa
...and his wife
Outdoor Cocina (kitchen)
Island kids loved this pet bird that visited today
How to build island and village
Our boat awaits
Farewell song
Cute face
New island base with reeds being towed in like a huge caterpillar
Amanda
Kid paddled boat to shore, then Dad immediately started engine and drove off...??
Another rowing technique
J back for lunch then we were picked up in a wonderful people mover. About 11 seater all sumptuously padded and with a drop down video screen in the roof. It was just us and a Swedish/Spanish couple, paying $12 each for the afternoon for a driver/guide and assistant. Not much profit there. The video presentation began as we left Puno and headedinto the countryside for an hour. It resumed at appropriate intervals in English and Spanish.
When we reached the site we had a good uphill walk for about 500m. The burial towers were on top. The pre-Inca towers were smaller and made of rocks and mud, while the Inca towers were made of solid stone blocks, meticulously shaped to fit, lined with softer stone blocks. These were burial sites for very wealthy or important people. Some very small opnes for minor finctionaries but up to 12 members would have been in the larger ones. They were buried upright in a foetal position.
Around the outside, recent excavations had discovered bodies of servants etc who had been sacriificed to accompany their masters into the next life, as did the Egyptians.
It was all very interesting and the guide contributed a lot of background information and answered questions fluently. An hour and some passed quickly as it grew cooler. Ooooh - yes I did adopt The Position in the middle of one of their power circles. Nothing dramatic happened but it was a soothing place to sit and I must admit that I bounded around the hilltop with greater energy than usual.
For those of you who didnt pay attention last week, the Incans were only around for 150 years between their predecessors who dispersed after lengthy droughts, and before the Spanish arrived. The Spanish plundered the burial towers for gold and silver.
On the way back, we stopped at a small peasant farming family. They turned out to welcome us, with 2 llamas and a handful of alpacas of various colours. We got to walk through their one roomed house, where they all sleep on a large bed. There was an outhouse. They had cooked a sample of their potato vegetables, quite different from ours. The Indians here had hundreds of potato varieties. They served it with some clay/stone that they ground to powder, mixed into a paste and spread over the potato. Apparently it soothed indigestion. We asked about meat but the guide said they were mainly vegetarians, although the two guinea pigs in a run outside looked very nervous!
The man showed us how he wove mats and garments on a string thingie (ask J if you need to know any more of that lezzo basket weaving stuff). We were told we would be invited to buy something, which the Spanish lady did, pr give them a small coin, but it was almost as cheap to buy a simple pair of gloves in a llama design, so we did.
We dined at the same restaurant and ate almost the same food. We asked about el nino and were told he was home getting ready for school tomorrow. The gay Americans were there again but managed not to destroy any of the bar pottery this time. Last night they knocked over an elaborate marijuana pipe, which toppled in stages in slow motion until it hit the ground. The whole restaurant waited with bated breath . . . . until el nino held up a pottery fragment :(
Oooh and we succumbed! Just wait for a photo of The Hat. We cant get any pics up just yet until we can run up the laptop once we drop below 3000m.
And so to bed.
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