Thursday, October 13, 2011

Puno and Titicaca Lake




Sistine Chapel at Puno City, Uros's Island and a Uro's womam on boat



Puno has been named the "Peru’s Folklore City"  from its cultural expressions and particularly dances that remembered  the uses and costumes of our ancestors. The area surrounding the city of Puno was where the Aymara civilization started,   and it was the origin of  the  Inca’s civilization.
It's located on the shore of world’s  famous and fascinating Lake Titicaca, the world's highest elevation commercially navigable lake, it is located at 12,421 ft above sea level, on the Peruvian Altiplano. There are many  islands on the lake, one of them was constructed by the natives over floating  plants and they live and make agricultural labor  there, it’s name is the  Uro’s   Island.
You can reach this magic site by train from Cuzco (around 4-5 travel  hours, very comfortable) or by plane.
Another advantage of Lake Titicaca and Puno is that you can go to Bolivia Altiplano, that  have a very similar culture.

2 comments:

  1. Your post made me think of two things. (1) Your description of Lake Titicaca would be like having a huge lake at the top of Mt. Charleston! (2) There are many parts of Mexico City that were originally floating islands built on water. Is this due to similarities in their ancestors?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes you are right except that Titicaca Lake is located at 12,500 ft above sea level and it's 22,400 sq miles area.
    I know that there were two big islands originally in Lake Tezcoco and in one of them was constructed the ancient Aztek city of Tenochtitlan and when the lake was drained by rivers, emerged Mexico City, however I have no idea about floating islands, any way it's an amazing similarity that both civilizations had the same idea.

    ReplyDelete