Puno/Cusco Post

So, this past week I went with my parents to puno and cusco, two definite must sees in Peru. Puno is located on the coasts of lake titikaka, the highest navigable lake in the world. In Puno, we ended up visiting the floating islands of the Uros. The uros people speak a language called aymara which is native to Peru. The floating islands were pretty cool but it seems to me that presently most of the people who live there are there for the tourism more than anything. There were just so many tourists visiting the islands, which kind of took the charm of the islands away. After visiting the floating islands, we traveled to an island called Amantani. Here there are about 11 communities, which have a total combined population of about 5,000. The communities on this island speak mostly quechua. The tour agency we booked through is using money they make from tours to build libraries in these communities, which I thought was pretty cool. So, we ended up being dropped off on the island and we ate lunch with our host family then went up to the library. We read a story or two to the kids there and then played games with them. After that we ended up climbing to the top of the mountain to see the sunset. Then, we ate dinner with our host families and spent the night there.

The thing that really surprised me about the families in the community was how much quechua they spoke. In my community most people will speak Spanish first instead of quechua. In these communities, the people spoke quechua first even the younger community members. Also, when we ate our meals, no one sat at the table with us even though they knew I could speak Spanish and some quechua. The families were incredibly conservative and timid in this respect. However, as usual, the people were very nice and hospitable.

From Puno we traveled to Cusco. Cusco reminded me of a Spanish town because it has very tiny streets in places. It’s a really beautiful town. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to spend in the city of Cusco. We ended up taking a tour of the Sacred Valley one day which was really beautiful, but as many will tell you, it’s overflooded with tourists. I’d say that’s the only draw back of Cusco. It’s kind of like the Peru show instead of the real Peru. When you travel you want to see the sites and at the same time get a feel for the culture of the country. Unfortunately, I don’t think you can really do this if you just visit Cusco even though its necessary to visit Cusco. The next day we woke up at about 445AM to wait for the bus up to Machu Picchu. The reason we woke up so early was because we wanted tickets to climb wayna picchu. The INC only allows 400 people a day to climb wayna picchu. When we arrived to Machu Picchu by bus, it was very cloudy. Therefore we opted for the 10AM tickets to climb wayna picchu instead of the 7am tickets. It was good that we did. Until about 9am it was raining and cloudy. After 9am, the sun started breaking through and cleared the sky up. The climb up wayna picchu was rather difficult because the steps were stones which were wet due to the rain earlier in the day. Also, some parts were so steep they had cables you could hold onto. However, everyone made it up to the top including my mom which surprised me haha. The view up top made the climb totally worth it. I think the most dangerous part of waynu picchu is the decent especially for people with huge feet like me haha. The stairs were about half the size of my feet haha. Machu Picchu was pretty amazing though. It’s just so big that pictures really don’t do it justice.