Lake Titicaca and La Paz

We just returned from our one trip outside of the Cusco region. This trip within a trip brought us to Lake Titicaca and La Paz, Bolivia. I’ve always been one of those people who wants to see all of the new and interesting things there are to see whenever I go somewhere. I’ve always been fascinated by the largest, the oldest, the highest, the whatever. My wife tells me that I am a wealth of useless information and Lake Titicaca is a lake that embodies all manner of memorable trivia. My mother kept saying “I learned that Lake Titicaca was the highest navigable lake in the world in Junior High geography, and I never thought I would actually get here” and, to the extent that it was almost creepy, I heard basically the same sentiment expressed by a number of other tourists. The lake is big in the sense that Queen Latifa’s butt is big; it’s downright massive. It’s the largest lake in South America and it’s the largest lake in the world over 6000’ in elevation. And it is high. It’s not just over 6000’, it’s at about 12,000’ which is way up there. The only lakes we have in the U.S. at that altitude are the little emerald gems below the high passes and cols in the Sierra Nevadas and the Rockies. But Lake Titicaca is much more than just a collection of trivia. At this elevation, the air is incredibly clear and the sky is the shade of clear blue of my wife’s eyes. The sunshine is not just more intense, it’s more luminescent and it sizzles like a 4th of July sparkler as it reflects off the lake. The lake is speckled with islands and peninsulas and bays so the horizon is never the blue on blue one finds at the ocean, rather one is treated to views of the snow-capped peaks of Bolivia’s Cordillea Real and other mountains.

But one can’t just see the lake and tick it off of one’s lifetime “to see” list. The people of the area are also an important part of the whole sense of the place. Now that I’ve had the opportunity to travel beyond the Cusco area, I’ve really been struck by how relatively small pockets of people cling to their traditional cultures and dress in different small locales. We based our Titicaca operations out of the small town of Puno on the South shore of the lake. Mary Walsh, Mom and Dad, myself and the two kids had arrived by a tourist bus from Cusco which made stops at various points of historical interest and, of course, at various artisan centers where we were given the opportunity to purchase the local wares. Mom was fighting a pretty bad case of food poisoning but she was a trooper and didn’t complain a bit. Zak almost sprained his ankle running back to the table from what he has decided is his favorite meal – buffet and Maya was so engrossed in feeding a baby alpaca from a bottle that when Mommy alpaca walked up behind her and nuzzled her neck she nearly jumped out of her skin, as you can see in the picture above. But, we made it, and we were delighted by the destination. The women of Puno all wear the traditional long black braids, skirts, and brightly colored wraps but instead of the tall white stovepipe hats favored by the women in rural Cusco, the women of Puno favor teeny tiny bowler hats which left them looking like so many two-legged pepper pots moving about the streets. A variation on this theme was favored by the women of La Paz who wore elaborately-embroidered skirts over layers of petticoats which were designed to emphasize the size of the wearers hips, a distinctly different ideal of female beauty than that favored by the emaciated models in U.S. fashion magazines. The ensemble was topped by a sweater and a bowler hat which, apparently, became popular in the 1930s. If the women were selling items on the street, and many of the ones I encountered were doing just that, they also sported large aprons with multitudinous pockets from which they would pull wallets, change, goods, etc. One of the most interesting aspects of La Paz was the active street life and the variety of goods for sale at very reasonable prices.

On lake Titicaca, we first visited the floating Uros islands. The original settlers moved to these islands to escape the Incas and other stronger neighbors and found that they could eke out a living on the lake. However, the idea of living on one of these floating carpets of swamp reeds simply because one can eke out a living really strikes home the desperate nature of the lives of so many people in the world. In the picture above, Zak is eating one of the reeds that supplies hearth, home, and food staple. You may note in the background, one of the huts in which one of the inhabitants of these islands live. The sun was setting as we were returning to Puno in the late afternoon and, as a result, the temperature was dropping and I couldn´t help but think about the floating islanders with no permanent address and a life that amounted to little more than camping in a swamp…forever. Think about that the next time you are snuggled up under your warm comforter.

The men of Isla Taquile, only a few miles offshore from Puno, wear homespun white shirts, black pants, wide intricately woven belts, and knit their own hats, as can be seen in the picture above. The color of the hats indicates both their marital status and position in the community. There are only about 2400 islanders on the island and I talked to a couple, both of whom had lived in the island their whole life. Both indicated that very rarely did anyone leave the island and it was even rarer for a mainlander to marry into the community. The island was beautiful although the people did work hard tilling small plots with a sort of makeshift shovel that consisted of little more than a blade on the end of a forked stick. When I think of some of the travails of the modern world I guess I can see why some might be reluctant to leave but that sure makes for a shallow gene pool.

It is fascinating how these little pockets of traditional clothing and culture remain in the contemporary world. The women in the city of Puno favor colorful skirts, sweaters, and little tiny bowler hats that leave them looking like a whole bunch of little pepper pots scurrying about the streets while the women of La Paz wear elaborately embroidered skirts over many layers of petticoats, leaving them almost as wide as they are tall as an expression of a very distinct form of feminine beauty. The women in the countryside surrounding Cusco can be found sporting tall white stovepipe hats, bowler hats, or some elaborately embroidered flat black hats that kind of resemble a fringed-felt frisbee on their head. How long can these distinct cultural expressions remain in a world of MTV and Disney? The young people I´ve met in the city are not following these traditions and I´ve heard more Donna Summer and Rod Stewart than traditional quechuan music blaring from speakers around town. Maybe I´m just being jaded but I hope we don´t all become largely indistinguishable; variety is the spice of life!