Mari Dancing Queen

After a nice bus trip to Puno we check into a hotel next to the loudest discotheque in town. We love (#&!!) these places, and have managed to find 3 discotheque neighbouring hostels on our trip so far... Early the next day we take a boat trip on Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world at 3800m. The boat first takes us to the floating islands of Uros, which are so remarkable that it is easy to overlook the `tourist trap´ kind of feel. These island are man made of floating ´totora´ reed (riet) and have been inhabited for centuries. They used to be completely self sustainable, but now mostly depend on tourism. Not only the islands but also the houses and boats are build of reed. The islands bounce under your feet when you walk on them and some of the boat structures are amazing. We continue on to Amantani Island where we stay with Mari and her family. In the traditional adobe kitchen with woodfire we give Mari a hand with preparing lunch. I try to peel the smallest potatoes on earth with a huge knife... After an afternoon hike to an Inca temple on top of a hill, and another traditional peruvian meal with the whole family in the tiny kitchen, we head with Mari to the community hall for a Fiesta. But only after Mari urged me into the traditional dress of the Amantani women: layers of colourfull skirts, embroided blouse, cape and belt. Hans gets the easy way out: Amantani men wear a poncho over normal clothes. Within seconds of the traditional band starting, the dancefloor is filled with Amantani people teaching all the Gringo´s their traditional dances. Even though it´s freezing cold on Lake Titicaca we are overheated within seconds, because the dances are very energetic and also very long! And our host Mari is a real dancing queen and does not allow us any rest whatsoever! `Unfortunately´ we also have some piccies of this...

By bus we travel to Arequipa, a historical town completely build of white vulcanic stone. From here we depart for a trip to the Colca canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. The guide explains about the use of medicinal plants and the hallucinating effect of the San Pedro cactus. Again we spend the night in a traditional adobe hut, no heating, so loads and loads of blankets for -again- a very cold night. The next day we descent all the way down into the canyon and spend a couple of hours in the `oasis` by the pool with water from a natural warm volcanic spring. The hike up the canyon is pretty heavy, and halfway I get a chance to have a 20 minute rest on the back of a mule. Pretty scary actually, you have to trust the mule not to trip off the narrow steep paths, but it allows me to regain energy to complete the 1200 vertical meters hike up.

After Arequipa we spend some more days in Lima and have another couple of great paragliding flights on the Miraflores coast. With a very luxurious overnight bus (with chairs that fold down into beds and 2 flauwe Adam Sandler movies) we travel in 15 hours north to Cajamarca, where our friend Mariska lives.

I met Mariska when I was studying and she was working in Milan about 14 years ago. Since then she has lived and worked quite some years in New York before deciding to move to Cajamarca permanently in 2002, where she singlehandedly set up ´Warmayllu`. Now 6 years later more then 20 people work for Warmayllu all over Peru.

`Warmayllu is a charity organisation dedicated to elevate the educational level in rural and underprivileged areas of Peru, promoting the integration of arts education and the local culture within the official school curricula. Warmayllu encourages intercultural dialogue between people of the different peruvian cultures.´ They do that mainly through giving workshops and training to teachers, doing workshops and arts projects with schools, writing arts and cultural curricula for schools and all sorts of intercultural events.

We will spend about a month here and will try and help out a bit here at Warmayllu. Unfortunately our spanish is still pretty limited, which makes it hard to participate completely in the programs in the field. In our first week here our contribution was more practical, by rearranging the storage shed where they keep all their workshop materials and art works. Hans explored the town looking and negotiating for building materials, I explored the local markets looking for storage bins. I also visited one of the schools with Mariska, where she is running a weaving project. The kids had to shear a sheep for the wool to use for the weavng later on.

Further more we have enjoyed an evening in Mariska´s local `peña´ (kroegje), where they sing and play guitar and drums. Hearing Mariska sing in spanish and the local Quechua language was amazing. Yesterday we went to an open air concert of a Peruvian rock artist Daniele F. And today we saw Holland loose (ouch!) the quater finals with a group of about 12 Dutchies in a local bar. Later more on Cajamarca...