Lake Titikaka

Lake Titikaka sits about 12,000 feet above sea level which dwarfs most of the mountains I´ve ever seen. We booked passage to an island called Amanti where we´d arranged to pay a couple native families to let us sleep and eat with them for two days. We sat in a tiny kitchen with a dirt floor, gossiping in Spanish with the family´s two kids Edgar and Christian (10 and 7 years) for about 3 seconds before they demanded that we go out into the potato fields to play soccer with them. Elevation is no joke and I was winded after about a minute. Kids in Peru apparently have runny noses just like American ones. Edgar was absolutely fascinated by our cameras and when we let him take pictures of us his face lit up like a bonfire.

The island is divided into four sections where three kinds of crops are grown. Every year, the crops rotate clockwise and one section is left empty. I asked someone what the 25% of the island does when their fields are vacant and he misunderstood, re-explaining the rotation system. I asked again, trying to be more clear. I wanted to know what happened when you had nothing to do for a full year on an island where all anyone seemed to do was work in the fields.

¨Oh!¨the man finally said. ¨I understand now. My friend, that is when you take a break.¨

On the boat ride back to Puno this morning I met a man from Belgium who was travelling the world in his yacht with his girlfriend and their 5-year-old daughter. For three years.

Three years.

I asked him if he was going to Africa and he said he was afraid there wouldn´t be enough time, but that he hoped to go there on another trip in the future. I asked him if he would visit the United States and he said it would be nice but on trip like this you had to make difficult decisions because not everything was possible. Vietnam? Perhaps in a few years. India? Not enough time on this trip.

Three years.

I nearly grabbed the guy by the throat and hurled him off the boat.

Just outside of Puno we were talking about names and the Brit finance guy said if he´d been a girl he was going to be named Leah. The Australian girl´s eyes lit up and she announced that she was going to be named Stephanie.

We lost the South African and his British girlfriend tonight, along with our Canadien glassmaking friend, which was very sad. Before she left, she cut her necklace into little pieces and presented everyone with a different hand-made bead of her own design. Things got a bit teary.

Ten minutes later I just about shit myself when I nearly lost it by fiddling with it in my pocket while walking down the sidewalk.

In other news, beer gets very foamy when you try to pour it into a glass at this altitude.