The Birth of the Inca

5 February

I feel much better. We are in Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca after a sleepless bus ride and hours of hanging out needlessly in the bus station waiting for the hostals to open, trying to sleep but not able to. I was delirious and silly by the end, when I fell asleep at the hostal around noon today. [To anyone who travels to South America: the hostals are never closed no matter how late it is. You never have to wait in the bus station for hours on end until a “decent” hour. This was a ridiculous decision and I can’t for the life of me remember why we thought we couldn’t just go find a place to stay at 3:00 in the morning.]

Puno is a dark, drab town (as much as any of these towns can really be drab with all their colors, people, animals, landscape). There are dirty, narrow streets and even narrower sidewalks. Everything is perpetually wet, especially now in the rainy season.

I led us into the market this morning at the most inopportune place – the meat section. We were greeted by great hunks of every part of the animals; bones, heads, organs, slabs, everything -- and a woman hacking at a body part to separate it from its natural neighbor.

The markets here are amazing feasts for the eyes (and the belly), magical almost in the potentiality of all the secret corners and dark shadows that are interspersed with bright colors and open air. Coca leaves for sale, bottles of wine and pisco, bags of powders and spices, bags of home-made aji, fruits and veggies in all their colorful glory, all stacked in pyramids, squares, however they will best defy gravity. Each different fruit or vegetable blending into the next stack to create the most beautiful pile of food I’ve ever seen. There are lots of artesanias here as well that sell bags, clothes, rugs, and other local crafts.

It is the feast of the Virgen de la Candelaria here in Puno for the next 2 weeks. The locals say there are big parties on the weekends. This morning at the bus station, I walked out to look at the lake as the sun came up. The bus station sits right on the edge of Lake Titicaca. The lake was huge and I only saw a small bay stretching far into the distance. The city spread out behind me and to the right, rolling partially up the hills surrounding the bay. From a distance the city was beautiful, perfect with its lines and curves, the orange of clay tile roofs, church steeples and the haze of early morning.

This is where the Inca were born according to their creation myth. They were brother and sister birthed in the cold, deep waters of Lake Titicaca so they could rule this land. Father Sun and Mother Lake – a burning sphere and a huge amniotic sack, light and dark, hot and cold. This is the largest lake at this high altitude anywhere in the world.

Tomorrow we go on a tour to the islands of Taquile, Amantani and Uros, organized by our friend Edgar who also runs the hostal we are in. He also operates a new bus service to Cusco, leads tours to the funerary towers of Sillustany and owns a taxi company. He is a man of many interests and talents an much ambition it seems.

This afternoon I woke from a nap dreaming of condors. They were flying very close to where I stood, high in a mountain town. They were almost cartoonish in their hugeness with funny heads and eyes.