While hiking across the Isla Del Sol last week with a couple other kids, we stopped into the "Museum of Aymara Culture" tucked into a little village halfway down the island. The museum itself wasn't much, but the curator, a short, intense Aymara indian, was almost too much. By the time we left, we were all looking at each other like "That's strange.. I came for a museum and got a spirtual re-education replete with end-of-the-world predictions." Here are some translations of the science he dropped on us (at least that which I could understand and absorb).

"What I am going to tell you is what I believe, what was taught to me by father. My father was a great master of astrology. My mother was a master of herbal medicines and spells. What I will tell you is not what the acheologists, anthropologists and scientists will tell you. They will tell you this island is filled with Inca ruins. This is not true. All the ruins here are from civilizations much older than the Incas. They are from my people. They say they are Inca. I do not like the Inca."
"The name of this island is 'TI TI CR RCK CKA!'. Not 'titicaca'. Here is where the name comes from. My father taught me that a long long time ago, there were two moons that circled the Earth. Then, one of the moons crashed into the Earth, right here, and created Titicaca. The name has two parts- 'Titi', which I will explain later, and 'CRRRK CKA!' which is the sound when the moon smashed into the earth. When this happened, the great city of my people went under the water. There are cities just like Atlantis in the lake here. The archeologists have found them. Now they are covered with water. This lake was once a part of the Pacific ocean."
At this point the German guy we were with made a very German inquiry.
"But the water here is sweet (they say 'sweet' instead of fresh in Spanish) and the water is the ocean is salty"
"Yes, this is something the scientists will tell you. But my father told me that there are many chemicals and minerals in the soil here which, over many years, changed the makeup of the water from salty to sweet."

He showed us the many colored Quechuan/Aymara flag and explained the significance of each of it's colors and their placement. He instructed us to hold hands in a circle around it. But when I offered him the traditional western handshake, he rebuked me.
"No! This," he gave me the American handshake, "is a handshake of hate. Of domination. This," he arranged our hands into something like the second part of the "Bro" or 70's Black Power handshake series, "this is how to hold hands."
He showed us how a figure resembling hands clasped in this matter was a motif found on much of Aymara pottery and handicrafts in the museum. It also sort of resembled a blocky version of the Yin Yang.
He brought us to a number posters depicting famous "Inca" ruins on the island. He told us the names that they are referred to by archeologists, guide books and tourists alike, then told us their "true" Aymara names, which were all as onomatopoeic and spittle-triggering as "TitiCRRK-KA!". He told us which were used for sacrifice and which were "centers for great masters" of things like "Plumeria"- making art and spiritual artifacts out of feathers, particularly hummingbird feathers, which come in all the colors of the Aymara flag.
After awhile he said "I'm cold, let's go outside." We sat in the grass and he began to draw things for us in a notebook. He showed us an Aymara totem symbol made with lots of reprentations of animals. "This," he showed us a little squiggle that looked like a cat. "Is a puma. But it is not a puma. All the scientists and anthropologist come here and say 'It is a puma.', but it is not. It is a 'Titi'. A Titi is more like a cat, a regular cat, small. It is a very powerful animal for my people. Now, it lives under the water, in the underwater cities. It only comes out during a full moon."
At this point I wanted to ask if this animal was a "Real" animal or a "Just some shit we made up" animal, but i figured the question by it's very nature was offensive. I didn't want to be cast in the same category of scorn as the "scientists, archeologists and anthropologists", so I kept my mouth shut.
"And this," He pointed to another squiggle, "It a serpiente. This is very powerful, too. Because the serpent is very smart, quick. We all have serpent power, our backbone and our head."

He started to draw other figures for us. He drew the "cruce de los andes", (right) and showed us how each side represented a month of the year, and somehow he related this to the Mayan calandar, we he then started to explain.
He drew a chart showing two periods of time: our time, in which there is one sun. "This is the Sun- Inti. And it is a sun of sadness, hate, craziness." Then he showed us how we were poised at the end of this period, which according to his scale had been going on for a very long time. He showed us how around 2012 we would enter into a brief period of darkness, war and famine in which much of the world's population would die. "But," he assured the German guy, who must have appeared alarmed, "Many people with wisdom will survive. You will survive, because you have serpent power."
"Then, after this we enter the Inti-inti- a period of paz, luz y amor . We will have two suns, and it will be a sun of paz, luz y amor." He drew us a representation of the Earth. "My father taught me that there are two centers of energy in the world. Here," he showed us Titikaka, "and here. Tibet. When we are in the dark period, this is where the world will turn to. And in the end, we will all be the same, no race, no class."
We wondered later if this meant that we would all become Aymara, and if so would we all begin to defy the no-double-starch-on-one-plate rule that the Bolivians so cheerfully violate.
We all held hands once again and he blessed us and assured us that we would all make it through the dark times. Then he asked for 10 bolivianos. Which we were more than happy to pay.