Friday, 5 Septmber 2014
Today is travelling day! I travelled on a special bus from Puno to Cusco, where we stopped at interesting places along the way.
We started the journey at 7 am. From Puno, a city of about 250,000 people, we passed through the city of Juliaca, the biggest city in Puno with a population of 280,000 people. It is apparently not a safe place because the people there engage in illegal gold mining and sell the gold on the black market.
Our first stop was in Pucara, which was once inhabited by the Pucara people, who were in Peru even before the Incas. They spoke Pukina, which was the 2nd most important language in Peru after Quecha, the third being Aymara. "Kami seraki" is a universal greeting in Aymara, meaning hello, good morning, good afternoon, good night and how are you. The answer to that is "Waliki" which is something like 'all is good'. It is believed that the Pucara people thrived at the north of Lake Titicaca from about 400 BC to 200 AD. The most important God for the Pucara people was a "god with fangs", he is pictured holding a head in his hand, and is a symbol for the practice of decapitation practiced by the Pucara people. They are also famous for anthromorphology, archaeological digs found a combination of man and animal figurines. If Appa knew about this, he will say the Pucara people stole this idea from the Indians (elephant sami). The Pucara people believed that the world was divided into 3 parts; the sky (represented by the condor), the earth (represented by the puma) and the underworld or underground (represented by the frog). Later, the Incas would change the frog to a snake.
From Pucara, our next stop was at La Raya, which is the highest point in our journey, at about 4,350 m above sea level. Here we saw a glacier on the mountain top, the highest mountain is known as the Chimbuya (not sure of spelling) mountain, and it is the start of the Urubamba River, known to the Incas as the Wilka Mayo river - wilka means sacred and mayo means river in Quecha. The Incas used this river for astronomy purposes because apparently it flows the same way as the Milky Way. This place is also the home to many South American camelids: vicuñas, guanacos, alpacas and llamas. Camelids are actually in the camel family, but evolution made them lose their humps. Or so the guide told us. The plants that grow here are known as "ichu" (not sure of spelling) and is used by the locals to make rope, houses, temples, etc. La Raya is situated at the border of Puno and Cusco. As the temperature was about 8 degrees Celcius, I didn't stay long at this place.
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