We were waiting around in Puno, near the Bolivian-Peru border for Roman to arrive. Roman was meant to show up around 1pm but he didn’t. And
then he didn’t show up at 3pm, or 4pm or even 5pm. My imagination was doing
what is does best and coming up with all the worst reason for him not arriving
and Juanita was telling me, of course, that he wasn’t dead on the side of some
dodgy Peruvian highway. Finally at about 7 we arrived back at the hostel and
there he was, very undead yet exhausted from buses breaking down and thus 27
hours of travel.
Roman and Juanita and I then explored Puno for all it’s
worth (which was not much). Puno’s claim to fame is that it is the gateway to Lake
Titicaca which is all very well but Juanita and I had spent a great time on the
Lake on the Bolivian side and thus the cheap side. Yet Roman’s American
passport required him to pay a nice $135 to enter Bolivia so we figured we
would make do with the Peruvian side. So we went to the dock and found a day
trip on a boat, first to the floating islands of Uros and then the non-floating
island of Taquile. The floating islands of Uros were basically man made piles
of reeds upon reeds that people lived on and went to school on and interested
tourists on. About five to ten families live on each island and there’s many of
them, and every few months they need to put more reeds on top of their island
(and raise their reed houses I presume) because the reeds on the bottom of the
island rot in the water. The Totora reeds that these islands are made on are
also used for all sorts of things in their culture, for sicknesses, as well as
cooling agents, for bartering, for making touristy crafts, and to make their boats.
Anyway it was a short but cool little visit and walking on these islands is
like walking on a trampoline, every step is a bounce. We said no to the
millions of touristy things and upset the people and got back on the boat to go
to the real island. Well it was a long boat ride through very pretty blue water
and we got to the island which was also very pretty but after spending a little
while on Isla de sol in Bolivia I was kind of spoiled for pretty islands. Then
we had a little swim and our avocado banana sandwiches and it was time for our
LONG boat ride back. Well, Juanita was not feeling very well and Roman was
struggling with altitude sickness and the boat ride was just soooo long and the
sun was going down (in a spectacular way) and then, we got stuck in the reeds.
Not any reeds of course, the living breathing Totora reeds. And the men on the
boat had long sticks and spent about an hour pushing and heaving and and
pulling and panting and in all of this some of the local people and just
grabbed the reeds and started eating them. This old woman with wrinkles upon
her face, and I mean wrinkles upon wrinkles looked up at Juanita and I from her
tiny height and then grabbed a reed and chomped on it. We declined the dare I
imagined she had in her beady eyes and watched the men heave and roman got manly
and helped them heave while I take more sunset photographs. Well we were finally free and it was exciting as I had never
been shipwrecked before and we returned to our hostel and the next day on to
Arequipa!
Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru and we had heard
it was cool and it WAS cool with a beautiful plaza and glacial mountains in the
distance. Turns out, as usual, hiking those mountains requires a guide and
horrible amount of money so after searching the world for nice things to do I
read a blog of a guy who said “I went to the climbing gym and the guys there
invited me to go climbing the next day…” and I said “ok guys, get your climbing
shoes out, we are going to the climbing gym” and so we headed across town at
about dusk to this very closed looking big wooden door and after knocking and
then finding a little bell a guy came out and showed us to his climbing wall
which he had literally set up with a slackline In his garden. And yes he said
he’ll ask his guys if they will take us climbing the next day and they said yes
as it was Saturday.
So we woke up early the next day and found the dudes with
the didgeridoo and we took some local transport high up on the sides of the
city and walked across some arid land full of cactuses and dust and down into a
little canyon with a dry river at the bottom and some wonderful big rocks. Well
the climbing was weird yet awesome and they shared their gear and their music.
Otherwise there was Lithuanian girl there who claimed to not be a climber yet
climbed a route that I found incredibly difficult and couldn’t do very well and
told me when I was having difficulty that I shouldn’t find it difficult as I
was taller and thus it was easier for me. Not great encouragement but I
comforted myself by insulting her clothing style in my head (which was
incredibly terrible, even I could not fathom putting all those dumpy colours
together). Nonetheless, it was a great day in a strange canyon, the guys were
fun and we were so excited to get some dirt on our climbing shoes.
They invited us the next day for a little braai, climbing
and slacklining fun which sounded cool and kind of was cool as it was next to a
pretty river. Yet it was bouldering and for those of you who don’t know,
bouldering is when you climb short climbs without ropes and just use a crash
pad. It wasn’t fun as the routes were too hard for me and the rest of the day
was kind of weird for all of us as everyone just spoke Spanish to each other
and we really felt like outsiders. We went for a quick silly skinny dip in the
river though which cheered up our spirits (and maybe excited some Peruvians
down the river that I think caught a glimpse of something.)
Anyway it was officially time to go as we had a bus to catch
that evening for Cusco as we had decided it was time to do that thing that
everyone is supposed to do in Peru, that is Machu Pichu, and thus, with a few
hugs and kisses for our nice climbing friends, we followed a goatman and his
goats back to the little town, found a taxi in the sunset and continued upon
our way.
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