Puno: City of Festivities

Puno!

We arroved to this lakeside town at the very beginning of the Festival de la Virgen de la Candelaria (Candlemas). This festival is in celebration of the agricultural cycles, and the colorful cultures of the Quechua and Aymara people come from surrounding villages to dance and give blessings to Pachamama, Mother Earth. The streets filled with sound and a myriad of color and there seemed to be a celebration at all hours. We found out on one of our wandering walks that much of the music comes from impromptu "bands" that form on street corners. The more impressive shows came as geoups of dancers and drummers wound their way through the city streets.

Drummers kept a steady rythmic and earthy beat as flutes and pipes played a tune that when combined made your feet stomp to time. Dancers, men and women, danced in cadence to the drums and dresses floated, men jumped and twirled all while making their way up narrow, cobbled streets. We stayed a few days in Puno and were able to see at least some dancing each day. One of the processions we followed all the way up to the main square and church. While the procession and others continued to party outside the square the church was having mass!! Both areas were packed with people. We saw some dancers with scary masks that were made to look like the devil, giant curling horns and colorful hair and clothing. It was interesting to see the different styles of "celebration": dancing vs prayer, amazing colors vs pure white, raucous excitement vs devote silence.

We hung around the crowds soaking up the energy before going back to wander the streets, and eventually heading for bed.

The next day we tried out another cultural experience, the floating reed islands of the Uru People. A boat motored us out to The island that is most set up for tourism, the island itself is about 80-100ft in diameter. We had the "President" of the island explained how the islands were built. Islands have a foundation of the totora root mass/blocks and then totora reeds are stacked top of the blocks in crisscrossing fashion to about 2m in height or thickness. The islands are continually decomposing and new reeds are layered on top. The Uros use the totora reed for everything, houses, boats, islands. It was hinted at us from other travelers that the island we went too wasn't really live on anymore, it was more a show for the tourists, it was still interesting! Our tour was going to take us to another island but on our way there our boat had some issues, apparently one of the blades of the propeller snapped off.. so we waited about 2 hours, stranded until a rescue boat came out to save us. At least it wasn't raining!!

We head for the Bolivian border next..