Travel With Betsy

The thing I like most about travel…..especially travel in a disadvantaged country like Peru…. is that it gives you perspective. I am a thinker. I think about everything……good things…..bad things……in between things.   Frankly, in my everyday life, it wears me out. And, the worst part is that much of what I get focused on and think to death are things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. For instance, who cares if my black pants are a different color of black from my black top! Doesn’t matter, yet I still give that some serious thought from time to time. Sometimes, I think I should just stop thinking and be grateful in the moment for the good fortune that I am experiencing right now. And, as I am now thinking about the local people that I have met along the way in Peru and the obstacles they have to overcome in their lives every single day just to stay afloat, I am even more convinced that I need to give the thinking thing a rest for awhile and just look around me and be grateful. That’s the benefit of travel. One gains perspective.

Throughout our trip, we have been exposed to people that have a hard “row to hoe”….every single day. They work hard to make enough money to take care of themselves and their families, to keep their families together and to keep their history and culture alive. They are an industrious and proud people who have a great love of country. Here are some of our most humbling moments……

My favorite stop was at one of the local schools in the Puno/Lake Titicaca area.

There, we met a small classroom of students who were learning about mammals, when we interrupted them with our visit. The students and teachers, of course, knew that we were coming and had prepared some questions for us and…….a little off-Broadway number. Ha! It was cute! This little boy………

…and his buddy were balls of energy…..

Education of the children is not an easy task in the outlying areas of Peru. There are not a lot of schools, so some of the children travel miles in order to get to school. And, because there is always a lot of work to do at home with farming or taking care of animals, education is not always the priority of the parents.   As an added bonus, the government pays for the salaries of the teachers. But, if there aren’t enough students to warrant a class, they can’t justify a school. So, the teachers don’t have jobs and the children don’t get educated. So, not only do the teachers have the responsibility to educate, in many of these areas they must also take on the task of getting the children to school. Many of them go around to the homes, collect the children and bring them in to the school. We saw this kind of a system twice in our travels. It’s quite a challenge for the teachers and also for the children. But, we met 2 very dedicated teachers who are doing this. I hope they will make progress in their classrooms.

We also had another unique experience in the Lake Titicaca/Puno area. We visited the floating islands of Uros.

Here, there is a small tribe of people who actually live on islands made of reeds. It sounds unbelievable, yet it’s true! The islands “float” in the lake on blocks of roots that grow in the lake. The inhabitants harvest these roots and then bind together with rope and anchor them to the bottom of the lake. After they get the root system in place, they gather reeds that also grow in the lake, bind them together into pads and stack them all up on the roots. When they get enough reed pads, it makes a very serviceable, albeit spongy floor. About every 30 days, they gather and stack more reeds on top because the water disintegrates them fairly quickly.

The inhabitants build reed houses and fashion cooking areas on the soft floors that this system of reeds creates.

There are quite a few of these “islands” all connected together into a community. One of the schools I reference above is also on one of the islands. The teacher, whom we met, takes a boat to each tiny island and gathers the children so that they can justify the school. Hard to believe! This group supports themselves with tourist activity and by selling beautiful, handmade crewel and embroidery work.

Arturo, our guide, said that they live on these “floating” islands because it’s cheaper and because they don’t have to pay taxes. It got me to thinking about where I could build a community such as this one near to where I live in California. We have lots of ocean there. But, I was stopped by the thought of the toilet situation. If one has to go to the bathroom, they board a tiny boat to go out into the lake to do their business. This would not work for me as I have many nights of multiple trips to the bathroom. Part of aging, it seems. It would be a real nuisance to have to paddle out into the lake at night each time I needed to relieve myself. Oh boy!! I am grateful for my indoor plumbing and solid floor.

In Cusco, we had an opportunity to have dinner with a local family.

This was also an interesting and educational experience. We entered their home through a typical shop stocked with an odd mix of water, food, sundries, and other goods that was similar to others we had seen just about everywhere. We walked to the back of their shop to enter their bi-level living space.

We emerged into a small, open, and very dark gravel covered courtyard in the shape of a small square that was enclosed by the walls of the housing. On the first level, on the sides of the courtyard was a cluttered jumble of extra inventory of goods for the shop. On the right and left and behind us on the second level were the doors to the living quarters. Strung across the open courtyard on the second level of the open space were criss-crossing lines where a good variety of clothing of all sizes and shapes were drying. There were at least 3 generations of the family living behind those doors.

The door directly in front of us led to a large room that was the full length of one side of the square area. This is where the family eats, all together….all generations…..from baby to great grandma. It was brightly colored with a long table that was enough to seat our whole group and the family.

There, we had a typical meal that had been prepared by and served by the family. After they served us, they joined us for dinner.

I can’t say that it was my favorite meal of the trip, but it was certainly interesting. We started with a thick, gelatinous green soup that was made from the dehydrated potatoes that are common all over Peru. Anything made with these potatoes has an odd, musty kind of flavor. Of course, this translated into the soup. It was the only thing on the whole trip that I was just unable to swallow. I had a small taste and left the rest. The next course was a simple, but delicious, chicken dish made with a sauce of sweet yellow peppers….

….that was served with rice and was followed by a dessert made with a type of sweet tomato that tasted much like a peach.

It had been stewed in a syrupy, sugar water concoction and topped off with cinnamon. And, then we had Coca Tea with Pisco.

While this meal was touted as a “typical” meal, my guess is that this is a much better meal than they would typically have. The family was so gracious….and, they seemed to be very happy all together in their small space, enjoying us and each other. It made me think about the importance of family and friends and how we, as Americans, sometimes overlook the simple pleasure and satisfaction of being together with people we care about. It certainly gave me something to think about.

I will add that the guides we had along the way, especially the ones I had in Nasca, all talked about how hard it is to make any real money in Peru, even if you are educated. The last guide I had, Oscar, who was running his own fairly extensive guiding business, said that he just wanted to be like me. He wanted to be able to make enough money to travel wherever he wanted to go. It probably won’t happen. Very sad…..

So, there you have it. Just a few of the things we saw in Peru that made me stop and think about how good my life is in the United States and how grateful I am to be able to pursue my interests. I no longer care whether my black top matches the black in my black pants. I think I will stop thinking about that now and just be grateful that I have a black top and black pants that I can launder in my washing machine at home and don’t have to string across my courtyard to dry at my beautiful home in California that sits on firm ground.

Perspective, my friends……perspective………

This entry was posted on September 27, 2016 at 6:43 pm and is filed under Group Travel, South America, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.