5 December 2018: Bienvenidos a Peru

After a relaxed stay in Copacabana it was time to cross into Peru and check out Lake Titikaka from the other side. On Sunday morning we crossed and every time it's interesting again. We were the only ones in a car crossing the border, the majority gets out of a bus and walks to the 'other side' or, if you are a local, you just bike across. Because it was Sunday staff was on from the 'weekend pool'. This meant I had to help this lovely 'senor' put our details into the aduana (border control) system to be able to import our car into Peru. It was very amusing, of course our name is difficult and saying our nationality is Hollandese but then not being able to find Hollanda in the list of countries (as the official name is The Netherlands) makes everything even more confusing, especially because we're Dutch. A Toyota 4 Runner he had never seen either and we haven't seen one here either so that was not 'all him'. But with all the stamps we needed we continued our journey and until now all the police controls are happy with the paperwork.

What we noticed right away in Peru was that many houses in the towns we passed are painted with political slogans and names of candidates. The campaigns pay the owners to paint their houses with their slogans and symbols. It looks horrible as all towns look like the same and have no identity. Also, the elections have just taken place in November but the paint will be on there for a long time...weird! We drove through Puno, a major city at Lake Titikaka but very chaotic and dirty - even trying to bypass it was not easy.

We carried on to the peninsula past Puno where we had booked accommodation in Capachica from where we were going to visit Amantani island in Lake Titikaka. These photos are from the market in Capachica where we did some shopping, the woman here wear a traditional hat with colourful balls that is specific for the peninsula. Always fun to visit markets and view all the merchandise we are NOT going to eat (mostly). But we did manage to buy toothbrushes, tomatoes and fruit.

We arrived at our accommodation which was lovely with very lovely hosts and immediately regretted not having booked for two nights. Nice views and easy access to the beach and ferries to the island.

Lovely family with (of course) a number of friendly dogs. The  hostess was a great cook as well, the first meal that was a bit more creative than fish/meat, rice and potatoes in weeks which was very nice. We could leave the car at their parking which was great and took the ferry to the island the next morning pretty early. We arrived at the island and started the search for our accommodation which proved to be quite difficult. After asking a few times by luck we asked a lady who turned out to be our hostess.

It all looked like she wasn't expecting us at all but she arranged a room and since the weather was beautiful we decided to go and walk to the two archaeological sites on the island. They have done a nice job of creating these footpaths to these sites and the views are amazing all the way. It was hot and the sun at this altitude is very strong.

Our walk towards the Pachamama (mother earth) site - lots of stops to catch our breath as walking uphill at 3900 meters altitude. We met a lot of local woman in their colourful skirts minding sheep and alpacas.

The portal to the Pachamama site, a very large site with lots of terraces and remnants of houses.

The views over Lake Titikaka were just amazing from the top.

At the Patchatata (father earth) site on the other top of the island we saw these temple remnants.

We walked down on the other side of the hills and saw other villages, a very large football pitch and again many woman 'minding' (read gossipping and laughing together) their flocks of sheep and llamas. Every town we've seen here has a football pitch, Peruvians love the game as we Dutchies do. This year for the first time since 32 years they competed in the World Cup - for which the Dutch didn't qualify for the first time in a many years...

Our hostess dressed up in the morning and brought the traditional attire for us to take pictures, very sweet. So here we are all dressed up in Amananti traditional dress. The woman here wear a black embroidered veil on their head instead of a hat. Quite difficult to actually make sure it stays on your head.

Our hostess and me. She was lovely but there was a sad story behind why the place seemed so abandoned and empty... I had found the website of the place which told a great story and showed good pictures of the host Richard who spoke good English etc. and was the pioneer for tourism on this island. She came and sat with me and I asked her about the website and then she told met that R. had died 5 years before and that she (only 30 yrs old) now managed the place together with his parents. That explained a lot. Quite sad really.

We knew that there were more ferries to get to the island then to get off the island and that is might take some time to get a ferry in the morning. So we decided to be at the port at 7.45 am to make sure there was a ferry. Well, there was but together with another woman and her son the captain made us wait until 9am before he had enough people to make the trip worthwhile. After that it was a pleasant trip where we had a chat tot he son and the father who were managing the ferry.

Our car was still there with the content so we were on our way to Chivay to visit the Colca canyon. We drove past several of these 'family-castles, a few buildings with a wall around it and in the corner a small chulpa for family members. On the way to the Colca canyon we visited another archaeological site, Sillustani.

Sillustani is an important and very large burial site full of chulpa's, burial towers. They are located on a peninsula near a lake.

The chulpa's are built from around 1000 yrs before Ch. to around 1500  a.Ch, by the Indian people before Inca domination and by the Inca's. This one is an Inca structure with plaster.

Around the chulpa's the local flocks were roaming as usual.

This one was very impressive and very high. A feat of engineering really built without mortar of stones that fit exactly. On the left there is the small entrance to the inner of the chulpa, the actual burial chamber inside the tower.

This half chulpa shows the burial chamber inside the tower which was closed off completely and constructed out of river/lake stones. The dead were buried sitting up mostly together with gifts for the gods and tools of their trades. As it was cold in the chambers, the dead were mummified as a result. You can see the hollow parts in the stones. That's where another stone was inserted before the adjusting wall stone was put in place, thus creating a kind of LEGO block system, that could withstand earthquakes. This one did not survive the Spaniards though.

On our way back to the car we had some fried trucha (trout) that you can eat everywhere around lake Titicaca, which made me very happy after months of meat only in Argentina and Bolivia (no lakes no sea!). There we met an interesting guy Augusto with whom we had a very nice chat about his work as a 'enabler' as he called himself (not a shaman) and his work for tourismo Peru. This photo is only to show one of his potions that he was selling as obviously I didn't know Hans was taking the photo while I was listening to Augusto. It's called Rompe Calzon 'sexual behaviour deshinibitor'. That made us laugh so much and he had a great story to tell so we had to buy one. The ingredients are sugar cane bourbon, honey and his secret herbal mix so it will make for an interesting night cap if nothing more haha!

On the way to Chivay, our starting point to visit the Colca canyon we saw these interesting rock formations as we got closer to the canyon.

The Colca canyon is a very deep canyon reasonably close to Arrequipa which means that bus loads of tourists visit the canyon in day trips to mainly visit the Mirador del Condors to watch there beautiful birds fly.
We wanted to sleep in a bit so arrived at the mirador when there were loads of day tourists but nonetheless we did see condors!. This one was so close that even with just the phone Hans was able to capture this picture. 3 meters wingspan, just amazing these vultures.

Seeing these birds using the thermal air flows to soar over the canyon was amazing, even with the chatter of Swiss german in our ears...

We visited a geiser as that seemed a good place for a picknick and it turned out to be a beautiful spot with also 5 condors circling!

Just us there as it was a bit of a drive for which the tourist buses have no time. And this group of wild horses watching us with curiosity as we walked further up hill to watch the views and the condors.

On our last day in the canyon we decided on a bit of walking down into the canyon to a bridge over the river where also a number of hot pools are located. The very hot water comes straight out of the hills alongside the river, which are all volcanic. It was very nice to soak here with nice views to conclude our visit here. Next on the menu is Espinar to visit the 3 canyones.