Yucca in Puno and Lake Titikaka

There is a Peruvian verb: enyucar, which has a very interesting history. It comes from Fujimori’s presidential campaign. He promised the Peruvians that he would not engage in privatizing services, but when he came into power that is exactly what he did. He was known to always carry yucca with him, so yucca became a symbol of deceit and the verb enyucar means to deceive or cheat. For example, when you are bargaining in the markets, you can say “what’s the price ‘sin yucca’,” or “what’s the price without yucca/deceit.”

In Puno, I saw the most beautiful sunset and sunrise on water I have ever seen. The beauty of Lake Titikaka is unmatched. But, I was surprised to find Puno to be filled with tourists. I was not expecting this to be the case, but Europeans and Americans filled the streets. For this reason, there is a lot yucca in around the area.

My friends Carrie and John came to visit me and we met in Puno and decided to spend two days and two nights on the islands in Lake Titikaka. All the guidebooks say that its best to try to visit the islands on your own, instead of using a tour group. But, this appeared to be impossible, as all the boats were connected to a tour group. So, we managed to catch the last boat to Amantani and spent the day and night there, which was very nice. (See pictures) The next day, we went to Taquile, but were told that there was no boat that would return back to Puno the next morning (we needed to return in by the afternoon because our flight back to Lima was in the afternoon). As a result, we agreed to hire a private boat for 200 soles (which was a yucca because we knew that there were non tourist boats that left sometimes for 10 soles). We spent the day hiking and when the thunderstorm came, we ate a candlelit dinner in our hut (because there was no electricity or running water).

The next morning, we came down for breakfast, after watching the sunrise and were met by someone who was the captain of the boat. They informed us that they would charge 300 soles to take us or they would not take us. After arguing with them, I finally consented since we didn’t have another choice. Luckily, we didn’t have the money on us, so we negotiated that we would go to the bank and then give him the money. We searched for other boats, but to no avail, so were forced to take this boat. On the boat ride back to Puno, we angrily discussed what we were going to do, 1) give 200 soles and walk away 2) Offer the dollars we had 3) Actually give him the 250 newly negotiated price. We came to the conclusion that it was the tour company and the middleman (out host) that had “enyuca’d” us, and not the captain. As a result, we decided to offer the dollars first (which was equivalent to about 200 soles) and then to pay the 250 soles because the captain was probably not at fault (this was much analysis of the situation).

In the end, we were all happy and laughed about the situation, because the captain ended up being more than happy to take the dollars and we were happy to have only paid the original agreed upon 200 soles.