 |
||||||||
|
|
|
 |
|
|
This log is current to February 20, 2008 NEW: Peru Photo Gallery Puno/Lake Titicaca: This lake is said to be the highest navigable body of water in the world. Near its shores, reeds grow in shallow water. These reeds are used by the Uros Indians to create floating homes. Cut and bundled, the reeds are stacked until it creates a platform Over the years, the Indians have created many such platforms, and upon them have constructed reed homes. In this unique environment, the Uros have created a “homeland” of their own. As their homes float, are not physically a part of Peru, or Bolivia, on the other side of the lake. This girl and many like her live here. But how, we wondered, do these people survive? Tourism. People on the lake’s numerous (and growing) floating communities busy themselves making things to sell to tourists. Every morning, boats bearing camera-toting tourists from around the world arrive here to marvel that people actually do live on floating reed islands. Don was here more than twenty years ago. At that time, a few people were living on a few islands. Now, there were many more islands, and the isla Instead of one or two reed huts on a single island, there can be a dozen or more. As tourists arrive, the residents rush to greet them. They explain how the islands came to be, and that it’s a constant struggle to cut more reeds, dry them, and place them atop the old reeds as the entire island slowly sinks into the lake. If ever there were people finding a way to adapt to a unique environment, it is these. If ever there were a people finding a way to ca Guests are invited to purchase a wide variety of handmade goods, and are encouraged to ride on elaborate reed boats, for a mandatory tip. Even children get into the act, singing, once the boat leaves one island for another, for tips that are aggressively sought. For that matter, musicians even board the tourist boats heading for the islands and work the crowd for tips. Fortunately for their long-term financial survival, the uniqueness of the floating islands outweighs (at lea Back in Puno, we found locals and people from remote villages commencing an annual festival. These men are placing died sawdust on the street, part of a design contest that became elaborate. Bands and dancers marched the streets, seemingly through the night. We found this fascinating. Here in this isolated section of the Andes, a place were life can be extremely difficult, people were celebrating and competing and prospering. Don spotted a group of people dressed in brightly colored, traditional clothing, and couldn’t resist recording some high definition movies. People were fascinated when he played them back. Don found Puno, too, much different than it was two decades ago. It is not a beautiful town, but it has a heart and soul that is evident in the way the people here celebrate who they are and what they have. There is no airport here As we worried about missing our flight the driver disappeared -- showing up nearly a half hour later, one gallon of diesel fuel in a can. In Juliaca, a hellhole of a town if ever there was one, we found ourselves blocked by parades and festivities. We made the flight and soon found ourselves observing 20,000 foot volcanoes in the distance as we winged out way to Lima. There, we regrouped, bought Cruz del Sur (Southern Cross) bus line tickets, and a day later took the seven hour ride to Nazca, in Peru’s southern desert. We had never seen a place so dry. Our quest was to see the mysterious Nazca Lines, images somehow created across vast expanses of desert. O We signed up for a 30-minute commercial flight, and sure enough, images not perceptible from the ground (in fact, the Pan America highway was inadvertently built right through some of the images) soon became visible. Becky took this photo of what appears to be a spider from an altitude of 1,000 feet above the gro A dozen miles further on, she captured a giant hummingbird, with a snout perhaps a kilometer long. It appears that the soil beneath the surface is a lighter color, and that disturbances in this area where it never rains last forever. We don’t subscribe to the theory that creatures from space created these lines (as advanced in the book Chariots of the Gods) but no matter who created them, or how, they are indeed a great mystery. We were not sorry to have invested the expense and time (a portion of it in a blistering hot bus) to visit Nazca. Temp end |
.
nds were much bigger. 
sh in on tourism, it is these.
st it did for us) the commercialization of their development.
.
, so when it came time to fly back to Lima, we joined a dozen other people, cramming ourselves into a van for the ride to the Juliaca airport, about 35 kilometers away. Unfortunately, the driver neglected to fuel the vehicle, so we found ourselves stranded between the two towns. 
f particular interest is the fact that although scientists say that many of these lines were made 2,500 years ago, the images can only be made out from the air.
und.