LAKE TITICACA, LA PAZ AND SORATA
I left Jura at 9 a.m. by the Arequipa Puno train, which set me down at
Puno, alongside Lake Titicaca at 8 p.m. or a little earlier; there one
of the comfortable lake steamers, the “Puno” or the “Quaqui,” awaits the
train for passengers for La Paz. The highest point passed by the train
on the way to Puno is Crucero Alto (14,666ft.); the country here is just
a high, bleak, sandy desert for miles around. Either here or at Juliaca
further up the line, you get off to continue the long journey to the Rio
Santo Domingo (Sunday) river. At Juliaca, part of the train goes on to
Cusco, the old capital of the Incas, and the other part goes to Puno.
After passing Jura, I saw several herds of guanacos, and sometimes a few
deer. Further up, over the 12,000ft. line near Crucero Alto and Juliaca,
I could see the vicuñas going galloping off on either side of the line,
as the train came near. The guanaco is found from 3,000ft. to 9,000ft.
or 10,000ft., the vicuña from 9,000ft. to 16,000ft., and the true condor
eagle from 14,000ft. to 16,000ft., except when some animal dies down
below, then they seem to scent it and go to as low as 12,000ft. to
finish it off. At 16,000ft. perpetual snow generally begins in these
parts, and over that altitude nothing is to be seen, not a bird, or a
beast, or a tree of any sort.
At first I had the idea of continuing the journey to Challana from Puno
and not touching La Paz until my return, but I eventually decided to go
and call on Staedlier first, and hear what he had to say about his trip.
At Puno I went to call on the Prefect, who received me very well, and
wanted me to stay for a month or two to examine some Inca ruins that he
knew of some ten leagues off. He offered to find me ten or twelve
Indians and llamas, and lend me a good mule for myself. I thanked him,
and told him that after I had finished the job on hand I would certainly
look him up again and explore the ruins he spoke of.
There was no boat the night the train arrived, as I had come by the
weekly cargo train, or extra, so I left Puno by the lake steamer the
following night, and got to Quaqui on the Bolivian side of the lake
next afternoon.
Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, is 165 miles
long, 65 miles broad, and from 100ft. to 600ft. deep. One half of the
lake belongs to Peru, the other half to Bolivia; there are several
islands peopled chiefly by Indians and Cholos, or half-castes, who sail
all over the lake from the islands to the steamer, in their native
balsas, made of grass and reeds, with one sail set, in all sorts of
weathers. The lake can be quite rough at times when squalls upset the
waters.
This great inland sea, replenished by the melting snow of the Andes, is
one of the most magnificent sights in the world, and there is no finer
view anywhere than the high Ylliapo range and the Peak of Sorata, and
the wonderful pyramid-shaped mountains of Yllimani, close to La Paz, two
of the most magnificent ranges of the Cordillera of the Andes, which you
see from the deck of the steamer.
From Quaqui I took the train to La Paz Alto, thirty-five miles off, over
flat ground all the way; this line passes through General Pardo’s big
ranch. At La Paz Alto (12,525ft.) there are always several big brakes
drawn by six mules or horses, which go down to La Paz at a good
hand-gallop along the winding road cut out of the mountain; there is
also a steam tram which has recently been constructed in connection with
the La Paz and Quaqui line, and which is controlled by the same Peruvian
Corporation at Lima that owns the lake steamers.
As you go down the steep mountain road on top of a coach, a magnificent
panorama opens before you, and you see the city of La Paz, with its
red-tiled roofs, open plazas, gardens, churches and public buildings,
and some old ruins on the outskirts, and beyond it, stretching to the
foot of the beautiful Yllimani Mountain the rich basin that forms the
Yungas Valley.
The city of La Paz (11,000ft. to 10,800ft.) is built in two distinct
levels. On the higher ground are the Government buildings, and the Plaza
where the fine artillery band plays; and lower down is the big Indian
market. Lower down still, just on the outskirts of the city, at
10,000ft. down a beautiful level avenue past the barracks, stands the
picturesque house of General Pardo, who led the Liberal Party in the
revolution of 1898, and succeeded in replacing Alonso for two years as
President of Bolivia. General Pardo was certainly a man who did more for
Bolivia than many others, though he did some good for himself as well.
It was General Pardo who regulated the rich rubber zone of the Acre with
Brazil, and thereby saved his country from war, got a good round sum of
money for Bolivia, and undid the work of President Melgarejo, a former
President, who had ceded the Acre district over to Brazil, with small
compensation for Bolivia. When Pardo came into power, he advised Brazil
that this was Bolivian territory, and that the former President had no
right to barter away land belonging to the country he governed; but as
Brazil had policed the district for a number of years, and as it was now
peopled largely by Brazilians, the Brazilian Government did not want to
give it up. However, they offered to settle the matter by paying Bolivia
£2,000,000, and the transactions were carried out in November, 1903.
When I got to La Paz, in the middle of that month, General Pardo was
still absent with his staff in the Acre.
While I was at La Paz, I put up at the Grand Hotel Guibert, which is
kept by a rich Frenchman of that name. The rooms are all well furnished,
the food is very good, and the prices of everything, even the drinks,
are extremely reasonable. All the servants and waiters are Pongos
(Indians), all of them males; they wear woollen nightcaps to keep their
heads warm. The only drawback was that there was no decent lavatory,
and not a single bath in the place. So the first thing I did on arriving
was to go out and buy the largest tub that I could find for my morning
dip.
M. Guibert told me that he came to Bolivia with a fair amount of
capital, and had made a good deal more, but he complained of having
contracted very bad rheumatism. I advised him to give the Jura baths a
trial, and to take some saltpetre every day and see how that worked. I
have met him several times since, and he tells me he is cured.
The whole city of La Paz is built on a high gold mountain. Many large
nuggets of gold have been found on the banks of the river that runs
through the city. One day I rode off on one of my mules to visit the
gold washing of a French Company, at the invitation of the manager, a
Frenchman, who lived at the place with his wife. The employés consisted
of a few whites and several Indians, both men and women, and the Company
had four large cranes to lift the big river boulders. The day I was
there I saw not just a few, but a considerable number of small nuggets,
one of them weighing nearly an ounce, picked up by the Indians and
handed to the different overseers; this was before the gravel was got
ready to wash, and I thought to myself what a rich place it must be.
Imagine my surprise to read in a newspaper two years afterwards, that
this Company had gone broke.
As I had intended, I called on the Vice-Consul for Belgium, Mr.
Staedlier, who had not long returned from his trip. He repeated and
confirmed, more or less, what I had read of his journey in the papers,
and said the Indians would never permit anyone to cross the River
Challana, let alone go to Paroma, and he strongly advised me to abandon
the trip.
Before leaving La Paz I also went to see Sanchez, a Spaniard, who had
been supplying the Indians of Challana with rifles and ammunition, and
receiving payment in rubber, till the authorities caught him and
Villavicencia and imprisoned them in La Paz; but, after a year, the gaol
was attacked one night, and the prisoners escaped. Villavicencia got
back to Challana, but Sanchez, who was suffering with his chest, was
recaptured on his way to Sorata, and again imprisoned. He was eventually
released on payment of a big fine to the Government, on condition that
he promised not to do any more gun-running, and reported himself once a
month to the officials in La Paz. He said he would communicate with the
Indians through Villarde, to whom he would explain my object in going
in, and he sent off one of his Indians with a message to him. He advised
me to go in by way of the Tipuani, instead of the Tongo, and told me
that Mrs. Villavicencia, Villarde’s sister, lived at Sorata, and that it
would be policy to go and see her on the way, which I decided to do.
At last I was ready to start. I bought a good, strong mule to carry me,
hired three others and two Indians from La Paz to carry my provisions
and gear, and started off with my old groom, Miguel Cadez.
I had everything ready to make a start on the Tuesday, only to find that
no amount of persuasion could induce the Indians to leave on that day.
It appears that they have strong superstitious objections to starting on
a Tuesday, like many sailors who object to setting sail on a Friday.
However, the next day we started, and M. Guibert, Major Holt, the
manager of the Chicago Bolivian Rubber Company, the Argentine Minister,
Señor Cabral, a few Bolivians, and many other English and Americans,
came over to bid me God-speed, and Wish me luck.
As is my usual custom, we travelled slowly, so as not to knock up the
men and animals. After ascending the long hill to La Paz Alto, 12,500ft.
up, we marched along the high flats to a place called Acacache, which
consists of two huts of mud and stone, one of them a rest-house, where I
stopped for the night in a room with a mud floor and a mud bed built up
about three feet off the ground. The owner of the huts was an old
Colonel, who had fought in the war with Chili and afterwards in the
revolution. Unfortunately for him, he had backed the wrong horse,
supporting Alonso instead of Pardo, and as all his property had been
confiscated after the revolution except this farm he had had to retire
up here. From him I bought a supply of barley in the straw, sufficient
for the mules, and a sheep for myself and the boy, which the Indians
killed and skinned in return for the inside except the kidneys. After
skinning it, they rubbed in salt and hung it out to freeze during the
night. In this way meat will keep quite well in these altitudes, if the
carcase is also protected from the sun during the daytime. I also bought
enough potatoes and eschalots to make a good stew for every one. Indian
mule men and porters are always supposed to feed themselves, and they
generally carry a good supply of parched corn, meal and frozen potatoes,
which they call chuño, and which is not bad in a stew when you can’t get
the real thing. They also carry a supply of coca leaves, which they suck
all day long on the road, and very often cocoa slabs as well; without
these, no Indian in Bolivia would dream of travelling. Still, I have
always made a practice of cooking enough food to leave a fair amount in
the pot for them, and in consequence, unlike many other travellers who
have written of their experiences, I never had any bother with them.
After a good dinner, and a most enjoyable cup of Yungas coffee,[A] I
went out to see that the mules were still feeding. It is absolutely
necessary to look into these small matters yourself, for in some places
the seller of fodder is quite capable of taking the stuff away from the
animals, and then swearing they have already eaten it. I never think of
turning in until after 10 p.m., so that I can be sure my beasts have had
a good fill.
Next morning, after an early cup of coffee, I went out at 6.30 to see
that the mules had the rest of the barley which had been put aside for
them, and then took a bathe in the pond close by, which still had a fair
coating of ice over it, except round the edges, which were always kept
broken for the animals. The old Colonel was astounded when he saw me
bathing, and said that if he did such a thing as have a cold bath it
would kill him, to which I replied: “Not at all, so long as you can dry
yourself afterwards in a beautiful hot sun like this.” I am certain it
is a great mistake to leave off your morning bathe in these altitudes,
and I have never done so.
Breakfast consisted of bacon and eggs, tea and wholesome bread made in
the Bolivian fashion. The Bolivians always crush the best wheat with
stone mills, and in this way all the best quality of the corn is
preserved in the flour, instead of being lost, as it is in the
newfangled process of machine-crushing.
After saying good-bye to the Colonel, who made me promise to come and
see him again, I started off at nine o’clock, my usual hour for morning
camp at these heights; for by then the sun has had time to warm up the
backs and pack-blankets of the mules. In my opinion, the chief reasons
why travellers so often find their animals’ backs galled and sore are,
first, that they invariably start before the gear is properly cleaned
and dried by the sun, and second, that their mule packs are far too
heavy and cumbersome. My own equipment consisted of plenty of blankets,
two broad thick pads made of straw and soft Capincha leather to cover
each, and a broad strap made of the same leather to join the two
together. I seldom had trouble with my animals, and I think these
reasons had much to do with it.
As I rode along over the high flats on an easy-paced mule, in the finest
atmosphere in the world, the blue sky above my head, behind me the
magnificent view of the pyramid-shaped Yllimani mountains, and in front
the lofty peaks of Sorata and the Ylliapo, with the whole extent of the
immense inland sea of Titicaca spread below me, I thought that nothing
could be more wonderful. As on the day before, we passed hundreds of
llamas, each with the load of 50 to 75lbs. that they are accustomed to
carry on journeys over the flats. The llamas are of all colours, from
pure white to black and white, brown or yellow; beside them walk the
little Indians in shirt and coloured pants; red and yellow, and black
and grey seem to be the favourite colours. They are all barefooted, and
each one carries his “poncho,” which is a rug of guanaco or vicuña-skin
with a hole cut in the centre for the head to go through; vicuña-skin is
much the most expensive and is only worn by the well-to-do. The Indians
always take their wives out with them on all their trips, and sometimes
they are accompanied by all their women; for an Indian may marry as many
women as he can afford to keep during his life and provide for after
[Illustration: A LLAMA]
his death.[B] Before he can marry, he must first of all provide for each
wife a hut or materials for building one, corn and meal for one year,
seed for the next, the owner finding oxen, ploughs, water for irrigation
purposes, if necessary, and land, usually on the share system, also
grazing for his llamas. Most Indians have a few llamas, and some have
large herds; there are no wild llamas, for, in the time of the Jesuits,
Peru, as Bolivia was then, made a law that all these animals were the
private property of the Indians. I once met a German who told me that
while he was visiting Lake Titicaca he went out shooting and, among
other things, killed five of these harmless animals; but when he got
back to La Paz he found that the Indian owner had complained, and he had
to pay seventeen dollars for each. Of course I told him it served him
right, as he ought to have known, and they were no good to him in any
case. I also told him of another German, a first-rate shot, who, when we
were on a guanaco and vicuña hunting trip with dogs and rifles, actually
shot and killed a wild donkey!
At about five in the afternoon we put up for the night just outside a
place called Machacamarca, not far from Lake Titicaca, paying the usual
2/-a night for the use of a room with a mud bed and fireplace, and
finding food, firewood and other necessaries ourselves. Fowls, potatoes,
barley and fresh eggs can always be bought at these places. At this
altitude it takes seven minutes to boil an egg, at 15,000ft. it takes
even nine to ten minutes. I arranged to rent the accommodation here for
two days and bought a double supply of barley fodder for the mules, so
that I should have a little time to walk along the shore of this
magnificent lake and shoot a duck or two for a change.
Lake Titicaca is full of fish, mostly pejerey, about twelve to fourteen
inches long, and very good to eat. Many of the Aymara Indians who live
on the shores of the lake, besides growing barley, planting potatoes and
looking after llamas, alpacas and sheep, do a good deal of fishing with
their small nets from balsas made of reeds that are practically
unsinkable. They take the fish twice a week into La Paz, Sorata,
Machacamarca and other places, and sell it there. I bathed several times
in the lake, but the water was too cold to remain in long. There are
geese and duck to be shot on the banks near the shore, and on either
side of the lake are stretches of flat lands covered with coarse grass
and low bushes. Once a year there is a big fair of llamas, alpacas,
sheep and little mules and horses held by the lake on the Peru-Bolivia
frontier; another big yearly fair is held at a place called Juare, a few
hours away on the Oruro-Antofogasta line. This fair starts on April 7th,
and lasts a whole fortnight; all the Indians come from miles around to
attend it, and mules are brought to it all the way from the Argentine. I
always bought my mules there.
I shot some wild duck and some geese by the lake; the duck are good, but
the geese are very coarse. I also shot a guanaco for my Indians; its
meat is very rank, and to my mind most disagreeable, but the Indians
seemed to enjoy it.
After spending a day on the shores of Lake Titicaca, I went on next day
to Sorata, a little town lying in the valley of that name below the
Ylliapo range, 8,000ft. high, and some ninety miles from La Paz. There I
was put up by Mr. and Mrs. Gunther, who were most hospitable. Gunther is
a large rubber buyer with plenty of capital, and the owner of a big
rubber estate, also of the largest store in Sorata and the principal
brewery in Arequipa. Both he and his wife did their utmost to persuade
me not to continue my journey. The first night I was there, Mrs. Gunther
told me that Mrs. Villavicencia, who lived opposite, had seen me get
off my mule at their house, and had said to the Gunthers’ cook who
happened to be over there at the time: “Do you see that big Englishman
who has just arrived? He thinks he is going to get to Paroma to spy on
the Indians of Challana and report to the Government at La Paz. Tell him
they will never permit him to cross the river, and that if he persists
they will attack him and kill him.”
When I heard this, I asked Gunther to introduce me to the good lady,
which he did next day; he just presented me and then left us to talk
together, and I conversed with her for two hours. I told her my object
in undertaking this journey, explained to her the proposal I was going
to make to the Indians, and begged her to send one of her men to her
brother Villarde, asking him to get the necessary permission for me from
the Cacique to cross their border and visit him at Paroma. She told me
to come back and see her the next afternoon, and she would let me know
then what she could do. That night at dinner Mrs. Gunther said to me: “I
don’t know what you have been doing, but you seem to have made a very
good impression on Villarde’s sister; she says you talked with her and
treated her quite differently from all the others who have been to see
her about visiting Villarde, and the old chief at Paroma, and she has
actually decided to send a messenger for you to her brother.”
Next day, as arranged, I called on Mrs. Villavicencia, who received me
in a most friendly way. She told me she was sending a letter on my
behalf to her brother, Villarde, by the hand of an Indian whose home was
near Paroma. She said her brother had been made a chief by the Cacique,
and was also at that time interpreter for the Indians; her husband was
there too, working under Villarde. She advised me to let the Indian have
a fortnight’s start in case her brother was away when he arrived.
Gunther insisted upon my spending the fortnight with him and his pretty
wife, which was very nice of him. While I was at Sorata I used to go
down the valley every day and admire the beautiful big cacti that grow
everywhere about there, in all colours from pure white to dark purple
and bright red; also the brilliant single and double fuchsias, which are
much larger than any to be seen at home. This valley is full, too, of
rubber vine, a plant that yields an inferior kind of milk.
Most of the Indians living hereabouts are Aymara, and own sheep and
llamas. There are some large estancias (ranches) owned by rich
Bolivians who spend most of their time in La Paz, leaving their farms in
charge of a manager, generally a half-caste, with some Indian shepherds
under him. Sheep do well, and give 6lbs. to 10lbs. of wool a head, and
50lbs. to 60lbs. of meat, good mutton and cheap, costing only 4/-to
5/-the head when the wool is off. Alpacas also do well in this district;
they prefer the flat ground nearer the lake, while the sheep roam the
hills and higher slopes. The sheep are tended by Indian women, who sit
near them in sunny places or walk among them with wooden spindles
yarning skeins of wool which they pluck from time to time off the
sheep’s back. Many of these women make excellent socks and stockings out
of this worsted spurn, which they have a special way of treating. I have
bought several pairs and always found them far more durable and better
in every way than any I have paid good prices for in England; indeed, I
am never without them if I can help it. The Indian women sell them in
sheep and llama wool at 2/-a pair; they also make them of vicuña wool,
but these are more expensive, and run to 4/-or 5/-the pair.