Huambo: Getting there

My next trip after Puno was to Huambo, a small village tucked away in the mountains near Colca Canyon, unmentioned in tour books but famous for being the hometown of Frida, one of the original Ñañas I met my first time down to Peru and a dear friend.  Over the years she'd often spoken proudly of her tierra and told me I had to visit one day so I was ready to go when she invited me to accompany her and her sister's family on their trek home for Holy Week. 

I met Frida and her twin sister, Miriam, at the bus station before dawn on Good Friday and we boarded with passengers weighed down by bags of produce and other goods to take home to their families in the mountains.  Two hours later we arrived at the town of Pedregal where Miriam's husband and son were waiting for us at the home of Frida's younger sister Adelaide.  There we also met our trusty steed, a green 1980s Toyota pickup truck which was to take us the four-hour ride to Huambo.  Above, Frida, Gabriel (Miriam's son), Miriam, and Adelaide's two children, Emily and Joel.

Although a bus makes the trip from Pedregal to Huambo once a day, they had decided we would drive ourselves instead so we could stop off where we wanted and have a more tranquilo (calm) trip.  Little did we know...

Above, Nelson gets ready to close the hood after some final tuneups, and below, Miriam waits with little Emily next to Adelaide's house.  The family moved to Pedregal from Lima less than a year ago, so they're still getting accustomed to their new life in the small town.  The woven reeds in the photo are the walls of the house, and the roof is made of the same material.  This type of structure is a common starter house, always with the hopes of moving to more permanent materials like sillar, the volcanic stone common in the area, when enough money is saved up.

An hour later we were off, three of us up front and three nestled into the back of the truck with the provisions we were taking to Frida's parents in Huambo.

The photos below were taken on the first leg of the trip and remind me a lot of the scenery I saw on the bus trip down the coast from Lima in 2006.  The little boxy structures are makeshift homes made from the same material used on Adelaide's house and represent a leap of faith that is still rather unfathomable to me.   While it's not difficult to understand what would send people away from tiny towns with no running water, electricity, medical care and schools in search of a better life, I still struggle to see how such a bleak, seemingly uninhabitable landscape could be a place of hope for a better future for the people who settle there.

Still, the houses made of sillar below with the beginnings of another piled in the foreground show that for some, that hope is not unfounded and progress does come with time. 

The canal in the photo below is another source of hope as it brings water from the mountains near Huambo to make irrigated agriculture possible in the middle of the desert.  I didn't get my camera out in time to capture it, but I was stunned to see stretches of deep, vibrant green in the midst of the dry expanse, and Nelson explained it was the result of this newly available water source.  I don't know how sustainable it is or how people gain access to it, but it certainly brings new possibilities to the area.

Unfortunately, the future wasn't looking quite so bright for our truck and before we'd been on the road an hour we had to stop so Nelson could fiddle with tires that had locked up. Luckily he had a really supportive team of back-seat mechanics to help him out, and we were back on the road again before we'd fallen too far behind schedule.

As we continued towards Huambo, we wound our way around mountains on the dirt road and steadily made our way up...

... which eventually led to two more maintenance stops, each one longer than the last.  Our truck was obviously less than pleased with the direction our trip was taking us.

  

While the stops made us more and more nervous as the day wore on, they did give us a chance to stretch our legs and take in some of the views.

You can see how varied the vegetation and mountains themselves were as we progressed along our route.

 

What appear to be clouds in the distance in the photo below are actually snow caps of the mountains near Huambo. 

Shadows were getting longer, stress levels were increasing and we were still without cell phone service when we made our fifth stop, 

but Nelson and his endless stores of patience and resourcefulness finally won out and he coaxed the green beast into carrying us up the final ascent then down into Huambo.  We pulled in, tired but victorious, eight hours after we'd begun our journey from Pedregal (and over 12 hours since we'd left Arequipa), and were greeted by the relieved family of Frida who was just getting ready to head out for Good Friday festivities...

Papas con queso, a la puneña -- Potatoes and cheese, Puno style

Special potatoes had been the Ñañas' request when I asked what they wanted me to bring back for them from Puno, so Alex and I stopped by the local market before leaving town and went from stall to stall asking the caseritas -- an affectionate term used for the ladies who sell their produce in the market -- for recommendations.

There are literally thousands of varieties of potatoes in Peru and the selection in this tiny market alone was a little overwhelming, but eventually we settled on the imilla negra, a small, softer potato with a beautiful purple skin. 

Back at the workshop, the puneñas (women from Puno) of the group approved of our choice and soon had the potatoes boiling away while Andrea cut up the cheese Alex had sent along from La Joya.

No knife to cut the cheese?  No problem.  Always resourceful, Andrea found a clean knitting needle and went to work.   Here, Maria Luz helps herself to a potato while Andrea doles out the cheese. 

Puno, Day 2: Lake Titicaca

Next morning we were up early again, this time to take a boat tour of Lake Titicaca, which forms part of the border between Peru and Bolivia and has the distinction of being the highest navigable lake in the world at over 12,500 ft.  

Blurry-eyed but raring to go atop our little motor boat with Peruvian flag, Lake Titicaca, and the makings of another beautiful day in the background.

Our first exciting sight of the day was this little island with tepee-like structures which appeared to have been made exclusively for the pigs living there.  Not quite as sophisticated as the cuy bungalows, but still pretty cozy.

The pigs belong to the Uros, descendents of a pre-Incan group of the same name who construct and live on the Los Uros floating islands, for which Lake Titicaca is also famous.  There are over 40 of these islands on the lake, both on the Bolivian and Peruvian sides of the border.

After about an hour on the boat, we landed on one of these islands (Peru side) and our tour guide explained the process of constructing them.  This particular island was home to six families, and each was responsible for bringing one or two blocks of soil one meter deep and about ten square meters around, held together by the roots of totora, a reed native to the area.

These chunks of soil were then pushed together by motor boats, pegged together with eucalyptus stakes, tied up with synthetic rope, and finally -- to my disappointment --  the whole thing was anchored to the bottom of the lake.

Once the base is assembled, another meter of interwoven reeds is placed on top, with new layers added every month or so to compensate for the decomposition of reeds lower down.  Here, Alex tests out the sturdiness of our island.  

Traditionally, the Uros people have lived off the lake, harvesting bird eggs, fishing and collecting reeds and other plants and animal products to trade with other islands and the mainland in a bartering system called trueque. 

Now, however, there is more need and desire for goods which require the exchange of money, which has led many, but not all, islands to open themselves up to tourists -- some offering opportunities to stay overnight in their homes, others simply to stop by and look around and buy handmade crafts -- in order to generate cash-based income.




The woman I appear to be stalking in this photo informed me that their island only accepted tourists on Sunday mornings, and the rest of the week they were free to go about their daily lives.

Motor boats have become a more common on the lake, but traditional canoes like this one still take both tourists and natives of Lake Titicaca from island to island.  The same totora reed used to construct the islands is used to make these boats, and is also a source of food and medicine.  Thus, when the area became a natural reserve 20 years ago, there was some concern about over harvesting.  Most of the threat has passed, though, as young people choose to move to the mainland and demands on the lake's ecosystem decrease. 

Taking a ride on one of the totora boats.  The landmass looming in the background is the island of Taquiles, our next stop...

A natural, non-floating island, Taquiles is the second largest on the Peruvian side of the lake and home to some 2,000 people separated into six communities.

Tourism began making its way onto the island back in the 70s, but most people still support themselves through fishing and agriculture.  Fava beans, wheat, barley and potatoes are all grown in terraces like those pictured above.  Below, the lovely blue flower of a potato plant.

After inhaling the exhaust of combis and taxis in Arequipa for two months (sadly, it's the third most polluted city in Latin America, after Mexico City and Santiago), I couldn't get enough of the fresh air around Puno and tried to soak up as much as I possibly could. 

Our lunch: piping hot quinoa soup with fresh trout or a veggie omelet, traditional dance demonstrations and another gorgeous view.  

After lunch, we stopped by the town square where a community meeting was being held.  The clothing worn by the men and women in the photo is almost identical to that worn by everyone on the island, and the men's hats and belts are woven by the women and carry a great deal of meaning.  For example, the colors and patterns on the hats change as the men get older and marry and are an easy way to tell who's single, while the belts become increasingly intricate the longer a man has been married, since each year his wife weaves him a new one with an additional symbol for some event or person in their shared life.  By the time a man dies, the belt is essentially a history of his entire married life. 

At one point I asked our guide if families from Taquiles intermarry with families from the floating islands, and his answer was that they generally did not, but for a very practical reason: language.  Whereas most of the people on the Uros islands speak Aymara (see previous post), those who live on Taquiles are Quechua speakers, and they are therefore generally unable to communicate with one another. 

After observing the community meeting for a while, we made our way back down the other side of the island to meet our boat, stopping along the way to take more photos of the beautiful lake and sky.

By the time we got back to Puno it was already getting late, so we ran to the bus station and bought tickets for an 8:00 bus to Arequipa (ETA of 2:00 AM Monday morning), stopped by the local market to pick up some specialty potatoes requested by the Ñañas, then made a last stop at a cafe for a final round of hot chocolates before boarding our bus home. 

Later that week after I got back to Arequipa, I was talking to Juana, one of the knitters who I had always thought was from Puno, and I mentioned how much I loved her homeland.  She laughed at that and said she was actually from Espinar (near Cusco), but she loved Puno so much that she considered herself a puneña (native of Puno).  I guess if that's all it takes these days, I'm a puneña as well.