Evening on the Island

Sunday May 15

Not long after our lunch rest started it came to an end. Time for a 'leisurely' straight up hike to the top of the island. On a saddle between two high points we stopped to check out a local celebration of Pentecost where the drums were pounding and the horns were blaring and people were dancing everywhere with cerveza flowing freely. Our guide said that the people of this island don't often drink except for celebration days. From our point of view they certainly worked for this party as they hauled all kinds of stuff, mostly mucho cerveza and enough styrofoamed food containers to make any landfill jealous, up the mountain.

From that saddle we hoofed it up to the highest point on the island which I believe was close to 13500 feet and watched the sun set over Peru to the West. This was the highest of twin Incan sacrificial sites divided by the saddle where the Catholic shrine and the Pentecost celebration was taking place. It was the site of human sacrifice centuries ago and is still a site where Shamanistic rituals are performed. The Peruvian Island people seem to have a curious mix of the remnants of Catholicism and Paganism as their religion. We found that the spot makes for better picture taking than pagan worship.

We made our way down in the coming dusk with the emerging light of the moon and the stars out so clearly that it seemed like there were more colors to the various heavenly lights then I had ever seen. Dinner was next, more potatoes. Potatoes are a staple crop in Peru and we could not seem to avoid them, for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. On this island alone there are about 90 varieties grown of all shapes, sizes, colors, and tastes.  Here our potato dinner lies hours earlier in the dirt of the courtyard in the home where we stayed.

Following our engorging on the Peruvian Potato Delight, the festivities began in earnest.  But who can go to a party without dressing up. The Mama came to our room with a 50 pound sack on her back, all hunched over and flopped on the bed. These were all the clothes that the girls gussied up in. It was quite the production getting them prepared.  They each put on about eight heavy articles of finely crafted wool.  I on the other hand got to go all chill in the poncho.

We all had fun as we danced the night away with each other and with the Mama.

Hey, maybe some pics someday. I think I had faster speeds on dialup back in the day.

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