Lake Titicaca, Amantani Island

Coming here is like going back in time a hundred years. No streets, no cars, no big stores, no hotels, water at a trickle from the faucet if you are lucky, and electricity from a car battery.

We have been traveling by boat for 3 hours and are greeted at the dock by our home-stay family. They are dressed in their finest which for the women is red woolen skirts, white blouses and black embroidered shawls, and for the men, black pants and ponchos. As we walk up the narrow cobbled path to one of the top houses we realize this is the attire for all Amantanis, not just those greeting the handful of tourists.

The home is better than I had imagined. The bedrooms are on the second floor and are clean, colorful, and pretty. The house is built around a garden that has a profusion of 5 foot pink hollyhocks and the red stalks of quinoa growing side by side. There are several mud brick buildings that surround the garden. One of them is a cozy kitchen that has a large table with benches. At one end of the room is a rounded clay cook “stove” with a hole for a small fire beneath. The fire is kept burning with eucalyptus leaves and small twigs. We sat while our host mom (Teadora) and her teenage daughter prepared a lunch of sopa (soup), followed by fried cheese (that was squeaky against your teeth) and papas (potatoes). One of the papas was a small fingerling that was waxy, sweet and delicious.

After lunch Sinclaire and I were enjoying the tranquility and beauty when suddenly there was the strangest noise in the room. We heard it twice and couldn’t comprehend what it was. We looked at each other and then at Teadora who smiled and then reluctantly reached into her blouse and pulled out a cell phone. She looked at it and then handed it to her teenage daughter. She gave us a resigned look while her teenage daughter broadly smiled. Suddenly Amantani Island was part of the modern age.