PERU AND LAKE TITICACA

PUNO  and LAKE TITICACA

 When my son and I decided to hike into Machu Picchu he said, "If we're going to be that close I'd like to continue on to Lake Titicaca." At the time I could find no American company that included Puno on their itineraries, so I booked through a Canadian company. Today, a decade later, I know of at least three American companies that include that area.
Puno in southeastern Peru is the jumping off point for Lake Titicaca, especially for the Uros people. Although quite small it is the largest city in the Puno Region. It is located at 12,421 feet above sea level at the southern end of Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake. It also is the largest lake in South America. It is an important agricultural and livestock area  especially for llamas and alpacas that graze the large plateaus and plains of the Peru Altiplano. The areas around the lake have been inhabited since 1300 BC. Puno was established in 1668, near the site of the now-defunct colonial silver mine of Laykakota. Few colonial buildings remain.

       The city is small and there is not a whole lot to do. There is the inevitable Plaza, a few decent restaurants, plenty of local shopping, the Church of San Pedro, often called  the Sistine Chapel of the Americas and a boardwalk at the edge of the lake. Out of town there is  the Sillustani Burial Towers where hundreds of years ago, the ancient people from the Altiplano, built a series of funeral towers to bury their kings and other important people of their regions.  The Sillustani towers are perhaps the finest and most perfect cylindrical constructions of ancient Peru, and cannot be found anywhere else in South America. There also are several archeological sites  around,  for those who interested in getting ‘out of town’ for a bit.

Both men and women knit and practice textile arts as they have done for thousands of years. This is well demonstrated on the Isla Taquile in the middle of Lake Titicaca.

We boarded a small boat for a cruise on the lake eventually reaching Taquile, 36 kilometers away. The boat had 8 life jackets, and there were 12 of us. That didn’t seem to be of any concern to the crew who just gave out the 8 jackets and then quit! On the return trip we never even saw a lifejacket.

We slowly motored through a lot of bright green algae, and through a cut in the reeds on the calm mirror-like lake to the pickup point for the guide who told us, “Titi means puma, and caca means stone.” The Incas thought the lake was shaped somewhat like a puma. Looking at the map I thought it took a bit of imagination to see that.

The lake covers over 3200 square miles, and The depth ranges from 15-20 feet deep to 900-feet deep in the northern part of the lake. The lake is a bit over 100 miles long, and. 22 rivers feed the lake. There is a tremendous amount of evaporation that takes place because of the altitude and the hot sun.

Those arriving here from sea level stand a good chance of experiencing soroche, known to us non-natives as altitude sickness.  We didn’t have any problems breathing in Puno, as I guess the trek into Machu Picchu and a visit to Cuszo had acclimatized us a bit.