Pondering Peru …

Mad, bad … but ultimately fab? Peru is so crammed full of contradictions it is hard to put the place into words. True, there have been times in this last couple of weeks where I felt that the best part of Peru was the airport out of it, but then again, we have seen and done some of the most mindblowing things of all.
This is a country that defies all attempts to classify or generalise about it. Every time you think you’ve got it sussed, it throws you a complete curve ball. You can sit in one of its sprawling, stinking cities and think the country is the pits. And then you can travel just a few miles and find the most incredible landscape, or group of people. How can a country hold Macchu Picchu, the highest plain of the Andes (the Alto Plano), Lake Titicaca, the Nasca desert and the Amazon rainforest, alongside the urban messes of Juliaca and Puno? How can a government maintain extroadinarily good roads – certainly by Central and South American standards – and yet have millions living without water, basic sanitation and electricity? How can there be affluent, teeming suburbs of Lima just a couple of miles away from shanty towns, and a couple of hours down the road, people living as Britons must have done before the industrial revolution, on and with the land, in entirely sustainable ways unchanged for centuries?

Nowhere is the contrast more stark than at Lake Titicaca. Here, on the highest navigable lake in the world at 4, 000 metres above sea level, lies the predictably unappealing city of Puno. With slums and stench, and people scavenging through fetid rubbish on the railway tracks, it is deluged each night by the thunderstorms rolling in from the Andes. The lakeshore itself is polluted and green … and yet just a couple of kilometres offshore are the Uros islands. Not natural islands, but timeless manmade creations, crafted in the same way as they have been for 600 years by some 2, 000 people who make their homes out on the water. This has to be one of the most sustainable ways I have ever seen of living. I am not saying it is easy, far from it, but these people live in groups of up to five families floating far away from the hustle and bustle of the city. They spend 6 months creating their island from reeds that grow naturally in Lake Titicaca: they don’t even cut them, but wait for them to naturally float up complete with their reed ball. They then tie these 2 metre deep reed sections together, holding them fast with eucalyptus, and lay another metre of more of reed leaves on top. Their homes, made of reeds as well, are utterly basic, and they make fabulous reed boats – those who know about Thor Hyerdal (Kontiki Man) will recognise them instantly. There, fishing for their food, wearing traditional dress each day, drinking lake water, speaking Inca languages and bartering with their neighbours, they live the most simplistic life imaginable. Utterly divorced from 21st century living in Puno, let alone in the West. They seem happy, they don’t suffer from the same kind of illnesses that besiege Westerners (infact one of their biggest problems was tooth decay, until they persuaded the tourists to stop giving their kids sweets as a present). To visit the Uros is to step into an entirely different time and place.