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like a mandolin but made from armadillo shell and wood) and strummed it. Marcus was a wonderful player, and I listened, enchanted.

‘Now listen to this, Yossi,’ he said. ‘It’s one I wrote for a girl I was in love with. Her name was Monica. She was mine for nine years, and now she’s left me.’

‘Far, far from my heart . . .’ he started to sing sadly.

I had known Marcus only a short time, and already he was sharing his most intimate secrets with me. Monica had been the love of his life. When they met, she was fourteen; he was five years older. Almost ten years had passed since then. Marcus became a schoolteacher; Monica, an academic. She thought his horizons too narrow and challenged him to broaden himself, to travel, so he went to South America. But out of sight, out of mind. With Marcus gone, she had fallen for another. The song was so doleful, pouring out of a thoroughly broken heart, that I myself grew sad.

We spent the day in Taquile together with the Frenchwomen: me with the smiling Dede, Marcus with Annick. Then we all took the boat back to Puno.

Lake Titicaca was stormy, and we had to take cover on the Uros, drifting ‘islands’ of totora reeds (Thor Heyerdahl built his vessel Ra from such reeds). We finally made it to Puno, soaking wet, but in high spirits.