Jan. 6 - Puno and Lake Titicaca
Happy New Year my faithful readers! I hope you entered the new decade with excitement and are ready to kick ass in 2020! For my part, this week was dedicated to celebrations, relaxing, and touring the island communities of Lake Titicaca.
Meditation
If you recall from last week, I decided to start meditating using the book "The Mind Illuminated" as my guide. I invited 1 person from my hostel to join me for a session and, in a fun twist, 6 other people showed up! Apparently, lots of people want to meditate but need someone else to act as the catalyst.
Click here to read more about my challenges and successes over the past week.
New Years in Arequipa
OH BOY this was exciting and a little scary. There are ZERO rules about fireworks here in Peru. You can buy them on most street corners and you can set them off wherever you want.
Three of us headed to the Plaza de Armas to celebrate. Fireworks exploded all around us, sometimes just above our heads, sometimes on the ground. It felt like dodging artillery fire... but more fun.
Spanish
I took a 2 day break from Spanish and decided to watch English speaking TV for the first time in months. Felt good to reset and I don't feel guilty about it.
I'm continuing to sentence mine. I'm up to 320 sentences (which contain 1-3 new words each). I add 10-20 new sentence cards per day so I'm definitely making progress but boy is it a slog.
The next thing I want to look into is ordering the sentences based on a frequency list of Spanish words. That should make things much more efficient from a practical learning perspective.
Lake Titicaca
Despite what you may have heard, this lake is not pronounced the way you think. Turns out the "c's" in “caca” are pronounced like the Hebrew letter chet: ח.
Lake Titicaca is the largest high altitude lake in the world. Sitting at 3812 meters above sea level, the lake covers 8372 square km, more than 2.5 times the size of Rhode Island. It's possible to book a boat ride across the lake from Puno to Copacabana but it takes roughly 11 hours.
In Incan mythology, Lake Titicaca is the birthplace of the Incan people where the Sun God Inti birthed his demigod children. They rose from the water to lead the people to Cusco, the heart of the Incan empire.
The lake is also the nexus of many major cultures. Half the citizens that live on the lake speak Quechua, the language of Northern Peru and Ecuador, while the other half speak Aymara, an indigenous language of Bolivia.
Our boat tour of the lake took us to 3 Islands: Uros, Amantani, Taquile
Uros is a colony of ~90 floating islands. The base of each island is made from a mixture of earth and roots of the totora reed. The top layer is made from the top part of the reed and is replenished every 15 days. Apparently, every 20 years each community starts fresh with a new island. I wonder what they do with the old one?
We spent the night on the island of Amantani. Amantani is home to the two ancient temples of Pachamama (Mother Earth) and Pachatata (Father Sky). Each temple sits on a different mountain peak with amazing views of the surrounding lake and islands. The colors of the green mountainside set against the turquoise of the lake made for a stunning view. I couldn't help stopping every 5 minutes just to take in more of the vivid colors.
Our host Julian and his wife invited us into their home and guided us around the island. We also took part in a cultural dance with everyone wearing traditional clothing. I cannot tell you how strange it is to hear Despacito being played on a pan flute. Unfortunately, I failed miserably and forgot to take photos. For shame...
That’s all for Puno and Lake Titicaca. Next stop: Cusco!