Peru Guide
The Titicaca Basin
Lake Titicaca
An undeniably calming and majestic sight, LAKE TITICACA is the world's largest high-altitude body of water, at 284m deep and more than 3200 square miles (or 8300 square kilometres) in area, fifteen times the size of Lake Geneva in Switzerland and higher and slightly bigger than Lake Tahoe in the US. Usually placid and mirror-like, the lake reflects the enormous sky back on itself. All along the horizon, too, the green Andean mountains can be seen raising their ancient backs and heads towards the sun; over on the Bolivian side it's sometimes possible to make out the icecaps of the Cordillera Real mountain chain.
A National Reserve since 1978, the lake has over sixty varieties of bird, fourteen species of native fish and eighteen types of amphibian. It's often seen as three separate regions: Lago Mayor, the main, deep part of the lake; Wiñaymarka, the area incorporating various archipelagos that include both Peruvian and Bolivian Titicaca; and the Golfo de Puno, essentially the bay encompassed by the peninsulas of Capachica and Chucuito. The villages that line its shores depend mainly on grazing livestock for their livelihood, since the altitude limits the growth potential of most crops.
Titicaca is where the Quechua Indian language and people merge with the more southerly Aymaras. The curious Inca-built Chullpa burial tombs of Sillustani form circles close to the edge of the lake. The man-made Uros Floating Islands have been inhabited since their construction centuries ago by Uros Indians retreating from more powerful neighbours like the Incas. Floating platform islands, weird to walk over and even stranger to live on, they are now a major tourist attraction. More powerful and self-determined are the communities who live on the fixed islands of Taquile and Amantani, often described as the closest one can get to heaven by the few travellers who make it this far into the lake. There are, in fact, more than seventy islands in the lake, the largest and most sacred being the Isla del Sol, an ancient Inca temple site on the Bolivian side of the border which divides the lake's southern shore.