Armed only with our Quechua cheat-sheet and Spanish phrasebook, our next stop was the Island of Amantani - where we split up and stayed with local families.
Four of us squeezed into the mud hut kitchen where we took turns butchering the local language (my Quechua is even worse than my abysmal Spanish.)
Analin just smiled and served us gargantuan meals - for which the poor woman was subjected to endless enthused versions of "Sumaq Mikuna" (delicious food) and "Sullpayki" (thankyou). The hearty, starchy Quinoa soup was amazing (which lead me to later purchase my Peruvian cuisine cook book - which includes how to cook Guinea pig - bonus!) and a tad more palatable than the ocas (tough, purple, potato like tubers) though I can understand the necessity for carb loading here on the island.
Little Etson spent most of our visit hovering in doorways and peering through plastic covered windows at the huge, weird sounding strangers.
I succumbed to altitude sickness (the jackhammers in my head were completely unaffected by copious amounts of codeine) - so I skipped the fiesta, dragged on my thermals and crawled under a tonne of home made llama blankets for a kip..
No comments:
Post a Comment