Writings By Location| Isla Taquile: Slow Death by Tourism | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
Francisco then played the "no change" game, so common in Latin America. This is where he takes the 5 dollars he owes us from the day before, converts it to 17 soles, "rounds it off" to 16 soles (an exchange fee, perhaps?), and deducts the 11 soles for breakfast to determine he owes us 5 soles. But, of course, he only has 3 — always an amazing trick given all the money we'd just given him the day before. To this day, we still don't know the proper way to play this game: do we point out the obvious fact that he must have it, since we gave him more than that last night? Do we make him go into town to get change (though I can't imagine where: it's not like there's a bank or anything)? Do we haggle for the remainder? Enter into a stand-off to see who can wait the longest? Not knowing the answer, and not knowing enough Spanish to ask, Erin bought 3 wrist bracelets to make up for the difference, which, with two others she'd just gotten, would go to the nieces.
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| Look Out, Lara Croft |
We left after our breakfast, and hiked out to another set of ruins on the other side of the pueblo. We walked for about 45 minutes until we lost track of the correct trail, and meandered about the hillside for a brief while. An old man saw us, and called us up, pointing to a trail beside him. Actually, not a trail to the ruins, but a trail to see him work his backstrap loom, and pay 2 soles for the pleasure, of course. But it did lead us closer to the ruins, where, with lots of time to kill, we did what anyone would do so close to nature: we peed. And then we did a crossword puzzle.
We returned via a different route, and decided to go back to our room, pack our bags, then return to the plaza where we came in for lunch before heading down to our boat at 2pm. We waited until shortly after noon, but the restaurants remained closed. 12:30 went by...1:00...still nothing. A few people came up from the inbound boat by now, but they just kept walking past the plaza on their way to the pueblo. By a little after 1, we realized we were screwed, and didn't even have time to go to the pueblo and back, so we just turned to a woman by the side of a building selling crackers and sodas, and found what we could.
We ran into the European couple from our boat yesterday, Heinz and Agathe, and joined them in walking down the hill we ascended the day before. We learned that they had experiences similar to ours: they, too, felt obligated to buy something from their hosts, and they, too, ate outside, rather than with the family. We felt some relief knowing that even by French standards, this was just weird.
Our boat left around 2:45, and we crawled across the lake watching the waves go faster than us, until we arrived back in Puno about three hours later. Returning back to our hotel from before, we spent almost as long in the outstandingly hot shower.
