Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad!  Christmas is very low key here in Peru.  We did not see a lot of materialism associated with Christmas.  These people are just too poor to do much.  We sensed that it is more about relationships than presents.  Everyone spends time with their family and extended family.  They do have a turkey dinner, those that can afford it.  They do have Christmas trees, but most of the trees were bare of presents. The nativity scene is a big deal.  We went simple with ours but most people think the bigger the better, and I don't mean the size of the figurines.  I mean the more you have in it the better.  It made me think of what we do in the states with Christmas villages.

Here is a scene we saw at the fire station in Puno (will talk about that trip later).  Be sure to enlarge this photo so you can see everything that is included.

Apparently every year they do a huge outdoor market in the central Plaza de Armas the day before Christmas.  We quickly squeezed in some time to take a look.

There were a lot of the peasants there trying to sell greenery cut from plants and trees, even sod to use in the nativity scene.  They also build elaborate stables to put your figurines on.  (Sorry Alyssa, I know you want something like that, but I can't figure out how I would get it to the states in one piece.)  There were also all kinds of vendors selling ceramic pieces to add to you nativity scene - farm animals, jungle animals, even small tiny bags of pretend food so you could present them to baby Jesus as gifts.  I saw a vendor that looked like she was selling doll dresses, but found out they are for the baby Jesus in their nativity scenes.  

This was another pinch myself moment when I realized that I was spending Christmas in Cusco.

We did buy some things there, one of them being a back drop of the three wise men coming to Bethlehem for our nativity scene.

And you can see a bit of a chess set that we bought for Kelan as he collects chess set.  The figures
are the Incas versus the Spaniards.  Pretty fun.

We continued our Sub for Santa tradition here, but kept it simple by putting some money in an envelope and on the Sunday before Christmas giving it to the bishops of four of the poorest wards here in Cusco.  We stuck a note in there explaining our tradition and asked them to use inspiration to distribute the monies to these they felt needed it the most and to keep it anonymous.  We wanted to get to Nilda's house on Christmas Day to bring some goodies as we suspect they didn't get much, if anything, for Christmas, but we ended up being too busy.

We kept the Self-Reliance Center opened until Christmas Eve day so we could help some people, but after that it has been closed until January 2.  We had cancelled our English classes with the members as they all said they were too busy or traveling to come, but we kept the English classes going with the missionaries as the holidays are regular work days for them.

Most of our free time was spent shopping for gifts to give to our friends down here and making goodies for the missionaries.  Dave wanted to give them a taste of home (the Americans anyways) and let the latin missionaries experience a few American Christmas traditions.  But it turned out to be A LOT of work!  We have between 24-30 missionaries in each zone here in Cusco, so that meant making about 50 goodie bags.  It took two days of baking and preparing, one for each zone.

Here I am hard at work surrounding by the goodies we made.

We decided to include a few pieces of fudge, a small bag of caramel corn, a couple of cookies (Snickerdoodles for one zone and miniature M&M knock off cookies for the other zone) and a few pieces of some of our favorite candies down here.

Here is the finished product just before taking it to a class.  I devised a language activity that incorporated the goodie bags.  You can see stapled to each bag a slip of paper that asked them to talk about something from the topics we have taught them so far (some had them talk about their Christmas traditions, others about their family, others introducing themselves or giving their phone number or address, some had them role play a few things from one of the topics already covered).  It ended up working quite well and it helped me see where they are still making mistakes in their speech. (for the next review lesson).

We were invited last minute to the Aguerro's home for Christmas Eve dinner.  There we did eat turkey but the trimmings we are used to were no where to be found.  There were a number of desserts to choose from so we didn't miss out on the treats.  When we got there we found President Harbertson and his wife there, along with the Haslers (whom we expected since they live upstairs from the Aguerros).  After dinner we exchanged gifts.  That seems to be the custom here to open presents on Christmas Eve rather than Day.  We saw the smaller children receive one gift each and we didn't see the adults receive anything (except for what we brought).  Maybe they do more later, but we wouldn't be surprised if that was it.

We stayed up quite late, as the custom is to light off fireworks at midnight on Christmas Eve.  We made it home just in time to sit at our third floor window and watch them go off all over Cusco.  We are talking the kind of fireworks that you see at Stadium of Fire, but anyone can buy them here and light them.  It went on for about 20-30 minutes.  It was quite loud so we figured we might as well stay up and enjoy them as we weren't going to sleep through them.  We thought about going up on our roof to watch them. but we didn't want to be out in the cold.

Christmas Day we spent most of the day at the Self-Reliance center allowing the missionaries to use the computers to skype or call their families.  We started the day with our English class with the Cusco zone missionaries.  The sisters all came dressed so festive.

After the English class at 11 am we started the skyping sessions and didn't come home until 8 pm.  The missionaries were so happy to talk with their families.  Some even cried (and not just the sister missionaries, some elders were seen wiping their eyes after they had said good-bye).  A few of them we got to horn in and say hi to their parents and family and talk up how good their missionary is doing.  It was fun to be a part of that and it really helped me not to feel too homesick.  It did make me appreciate the sacrifice each of them are making to serve the Lord and be obedient to their duties as priesthood holders.  Everyone was able to reach their family that came to the center.  A few of the latin missionaries we were afraid weren't going to get through, even when they were just calling by phone through skype.  We felt it was a good way to provide service to the Lord's servants on His day.

We hosted Elder Black and his companion, Elder Guevara from Mexico to a Christmas dinner afterwards.  We didn't eat turkey as they only sold them whole and they were all so big.  We knew we were leaving town the day after Christmas so we didn't want to have a lot of leftovers.  So I made chicken, mashed potatoes, carrots, jello and pecan pie bars for dessert.  Elder Black seemed to appreciate it.  Elder Guevara said he would have preferred tacos (which actually I considered making instead but the chicken won out) so we promised to invite him back again.

The day after, bright and early, we headed out for a trip to Puno, which is on the shores of Lake Titicaca.  We planned to do some site-seeing and some missionary work.  We rode a fairly nice tourist bus out which stopped at various sites along the way.  It was an all day trip, arriving in Puno about 5 pm.

Our first stop was in Andahuaylillas just outside of Cusco.  We toured a small cathedral, St. Paul's that has the nickname America's Sistine Chapel due to the highly decorated interior, especially the ceiling that is covered with llama skin painted into detailed geometric designs.  They didn't allow any photos inside so I only have outside photos.

The next stop was a ruin site called Raqchi, about a half hour from Sicuani.  It has some remnants of a huge temple that was constructed to the Inca god, Wiracocha and a number of ruins of houses and storage buildings.  The temple walls were 12 meters high, they just towered above everything.  The construction was poorly done compared with other Inca ruin sites.  Dave didn't believe the Incas built the temple because of that.

 This is the north wall that remains of the temple site.  You can see how tall the walls are.  The bottom level is the typical inca stone work, but above is just adobe .type structure

Here you can see what remains of the pillar structures, mostly the bottom section of each pillar.  There is only one complete pillar left intact.

The storage buildings were all together in one section.  This one had a reconstruction of what they believe the roof would have looked like on each one.  Below are the ones that don't have the completed roof.

Dave is standing on the main road or walkway of this complex.  It was constructed to line up with the path of the sun for the solstice.  We were impressed with how straight it was.  It ran all the way from one end of the complex to the other.

Just outside of the ruin site the peasants are still using the ancient rock terraces to grow their crops.  It is pretty cool how they used stones to build in steps to climb up the walls.

After this stop, we headed to our lunch stop, a very picturesque site just on the other side of Sicuani, a restaurant called La Pascana, where we ate a buffet lunch while we were serenaded by a three man band and looking out on a beautiful waterfall, green grass scene, where of course little girls dressed in native costumes were waiting with either a llama or alpaca for a photo shoot opportunity for the cost of one sol.

Now if that isn't picturesque, I don't know what is.

And of course we fell for the bait and coughed up a sol for a photo.

After lunch we headed out again.  They stopped for a few minutes at La Raya, which is the highest point on the way, 4335 meters or 14,225 feet in altitude.  There you can see a snow covered peak.  Since we've taken this route before that was nothing new to us.

But we were amazed at how much greener the country side is now compared to when we made the trip in July at the height of the dry season.

After a short stop for photos of the mt. peak, we headed out for one more stop before Puno, at Pukara, a town located near a arqueological site that dates back to Pre-Inca times, they cited back to 1600 AD.

This statue shows a warrior carrying a "trophy head".  Apparently it was very prestigious to have trophy heads taken from your enemies.  It showed you were a brave and fearless warrior.  They were also supposed to bring you good luck.

 Examples of other stone carvings found at this sight.  The snake above and below the snake and the puma (cougar), two of three animals viewed as representing diety.

I found it very interesting that the timeline display put Pukara civilization exactly during the Book of Mormon time period - 600 BC to 400 AD.

 This was our last stop until we arrived in Puno.  We stayed at a hotel just off the Plaza de Armas and near the tourist street, Lima, where all the tourist shops are.  We tried to stay clear of there and found the local market where you can find things at the more typical prices instead of the jacked up prices targeted for tourist.

We bought quite a few souvenirs as we had been told by the missionaries that Puno is where prices are low.  We bought a couple of heavy blankets with beautiful designs on them.  Here is the one with a Machu Picchu design.

Our hotel had a huge bed to sleep in and a large bathtub, the first we have seen here in Peru.  Dave enjoyed that a number of times.

Saturday was our tour to the islands in Lake Titicaca.  We went to Uros, the floating islands and to a regular island called Taquile.  It was a beautiful sunny day and we enjoyed our time tremendously.
We left early in the morning from the harbor.

 Looking back as we headed out.

Our guide explained a lot of things on the ride out.  He taught us a lot of things.  He told us Titicaca is really pronounced Titi - jaja, with the Titi part meaning cougar and the jaja part meaning grey or stone.  He then showed us a map of the lake and said that if you view it upside down and use your imagination you can see how the shape of the lake looks like a pouncing puma (cougar) and either a rabbit or a kneeling Inca man with his headdress on.  He also said that on cloudy days the color of the lake is grey thus the name.  The bay that Puno sits on forms the tail of the cougar.

You can see that the lake is divided between Peru & Bolivia, with about 60% belonging to Peru and 40% belonging to Bolivia.  The green section is where the Uros islands are, or floating islands, located still in the bay area of the lake, and you can see Taquile Island further out.

From what our guide told us and what other people have told us, the standard of living has really gone up for the people on the floating islands.  Many apparently, now live on the mainland and only go out to the floating island each day for the tourist business.  From our experience it seemed to be a pretty lucrative way to earn a living.  I'm sure revenue fluctuates as there is a high tourist season and an off season, but we visited during the off season and I still think they are doing pretty well.  I'll explain more later.

Here are some views of the islands we could see.

They are in the more shallow part of the lake and they are not very big.  The photo below was taken from the edge of the island.

Each island has their own name, organization and leader, but all the islands, 80 in all, have one mayor that governs over all of them.

We visited this island called Tatallachupunco.  I think the tour guides have sort of coordinated and divvied up the islands so no one island has a monopoly on the tourist business.

 Above shows the whole island.  Three families live on this island.

We were given a presentation that shows how they build the island and maintain it.  We also were taught a few things about their daily living situation.

Behind our guide is a sample of what makes the foundation of the island, the reed roots.  They take blocks of those and tie them together.  Then they put mutilple layers of the reeds on top criss- crossing each layer, first horizontally then the next layer vertically.  Below, the girl holds a sample of the reeds.

 They have to put down layers of the reeds 1-2 times a month depending on which season it is.  Once a month during the rainy season and twice a month during the dry season.

They have to stick long poles through the island edge and into the bottom of the lake to act as anchors so the island doesn't float away.  I got a photo of one of the poles.

Above is a photo of their stove for cooking.  Below is what seemed to be a pet.  He sure wasn't afraid of people and just wondered around on the island while we were there.

We were also taken out on a ride in one of their large reed boats.  Here is where they make most  of their money as they charged 10 soles per person for a 15-20 minute ride. Our tour had about 25 people so that one boat ride brought in 250 soles for them and there was a group just finishing up when we arrived and another came as we were getting ready to leave.  Each group was good sized, so they probably brought in at least 500-600 soles that day. If they were able to do that most days, they are making better money than a lot of people working regular jobs.  Plus they were trying to sell souvenir trinkets, but I don't think I saw much sales going on there.

Here is the boat we rode in.  Of course, no one is going to pass up going on the boat ride, that is part of the whole experience.  Here is one of the rowers.  Kind of nice how you can lean back as you row.

They also had two young kids, 11 & 9, come on the boat ride with us and provided us with entertainment.  They sang a wide selection of songs in all different languages, Quechua, Spanish, English, and even French.  They struck me as well groomed for the tourist trade.

Despite the obvious tourist set up, it was still a very interesting morning.  And even if the Uros people are not completely living the traditional lifestyle now, it was still a peek into a distinctive culture so very different from anything we see in the states.

And if you think Dave's hat is funky, get a look at the hat worn by one of the island ladies.  Sweet!

So it was now on to the next island, Taquile Island, a normal land island further out in the lake, with yet another very distinct culture.

This island was very picturesque and because of the sunny warm day we felt like we were in the Mediterranean Sea or somewhere like that, not on the highest navegible lake in the world, over 14,000 feet in altitude.  Above, shows what the harbor looks like.

This is the start of our hike around the island.  There were six arches we passed through during the hike.  Each arch represented one of the six family groups on the island.

The hike to the top was quite steep.  We were glad we had acclimatized living in Cusco the last six months.  Others on our tour, who had just come in from sea level really struggled.

See what I mean about being picturesque? (See below)

There were lots of crops being grown using the terrace method.  

There were also sheep and cows grazing around.  Very idyllic and peaceful.

Below Dave rests at the top.  Behind him is a view of the Bolivian side of the lake and off in the distance you can see land that belongs to Bolivia. (funny how it looks just like land in Peru)

In the main plaza that had this really cool sign with different cities listed pointing in the direction of travel to each and how many kilometers to get there.

There were famous cities from all over the world listed.  New York was the only American city listed.

We had lunch just off the main plaza and ate delicious fresh trout!  Interestingly the floor of the restaurant was strew with straw.

So apparently, the culture on this island has the single and married people distinguish themselves by the type of clothes they wear.  The single women wear the brighter colors (yellow, pinks, reds, oranges, etc.) and they also have to cover part of their face when out in public.  The married women don´t cover any of their face and they wear the more subdued colors (blue, green, black, brown).  

The men wear hats and the type of hat they wear tells you if they are single or married.  Above is an example of the hat the single men wear.  We weren´t able to get good photos as they charge to take any photos of the people.  So this one I got using my zoom camera.  But the bottom part is red and the top part is white.  That means he is single.  The married men wear hats that have a red and blue stripe pattern.  The men who have positions of authority in the community wear dark hats so you know who to go to when needed.

The guy walking behind me is a married man, you can see his style of hat.

The men also wear a bag on the side of his waist/hip (you can see one in the photo above) that they use to carry coca leaves.  It is considered rude to greet someone by shaking hands.  The correct form to do it is exchange coca leaves.  Interesting, no?

But even more interesting is their marriage traditions.  We were told that it is mandatory to live with a future spouse between 6 months to 2 years before getting married to make sure you can live with each other and get along because divorce is not allowed.   If they find out they don´t get along, they can split up and move on.  The woman has to be very careful that she doesn´t get pregnant, however, during that time because once a child comes into the picture, they immediately have to be married.

Below is a sample of the hat that Dave bought on the island.  Beides agriculture, they are excellent weavers and the quality of the workmanship is very superior.  Dave is in love with this hat and it only cost him about $9.

Below is a parting picture of the island.  This is the last arch we passed through and the lake now is on the Peru side.  We are glad we took the time to explore this part of the world.

Next post we will continue with our Puno adventures.  What an interesting time we had!

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  "President Thomas S Monson has often taught that decisions determine destiny.  My counsel tonight is to rise above any rationalizations that prevent us from making righteous decisions, especially with respect to serving Jeus Christ.  When we rationalize wrong choices, big or small, which are inconsistent with the restored gospel, we lose the blessings and protections we need and often become ensnared in sin or simply lose our way.  We need to rise above rationalizations and distractions.  Distractions and rationalizations that limit progress are harmful enough, but when they diminish faith in Jesus Christ and His Church, they are tragic.  In all things we should remember that being "valient in the testimony of Jesus" is the great dividing test between the celestial and terrestrial kingdoms.  We want to be found on the celestial side of that divide."  -Elder Quentin L Cook "Choose Wisely"  October 2014 General Conference