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Lake Titicaca is the world’s highest commercially navigable lake and also South America’s biggest lake. It borders Bolivia and Peru on a big distance and lies at 3200 meters above the sea level.

Aerial view of the Lake Titicaca

The Lake Titicaca is an operation base for the Bolivian Navy, an otherwise landlocked country. But the lake is so big  and so deep, that facilitates exercises of the Navy. It takes the water from the Andean melting glaciers and from 10 little rivers going down onto the lake. The Lake Titicaca is fast closed, as 90 % of its extra water simply vanishes through the strong evaporation. The lake consists actually from two lakes, The Big Lake and the Small Lake ( or Lago Grande and Lago Pequeno, as the spanish say!), which are united through a very narrow isthmus.

The city of Copacabana on the Bolivian shore

You can tour the Lake Titicaca by boat, whether from the Bolivian town of Copacabana, or from the Peruvian town of Puno. On the Peruvian side there is much easier to reach Lake Titicaca because of the regular flights from Lima To Puno.

The Lake Titicaca was the heart of the Inca Empire, and the locals still speak Quechua, besides Spanish. Quechua is a very old language, thought to be spoken in the Inca Empire. The most interesting thing on the Lake Titicaca are the artificial floating islands, or Uros, as the locals call them. There are 42 Uros, and on the biggest live in a most traditional way a few thousands of locals. I visited Taquile, one of the biggest island of Lake Titicaca, populated by almost 3000 people(Taquilenos). After a strong isolation lasting 500 years the island opened the door for tourism in the 1970’s , offering a model of cooperative tourism.

An Uro on Lake Titicaca

When you reach Taquile one of the locals ( no one knows in advance which one) will be charged and honored to host you. Most of the houses have no running water and electricity, but the hosting fees are very low , only 10 soles ( 3 dollars). The same price has in average a lunch in one of  the local restaurants. The Taquilenos do farming and cooking, as also spinning yarns for their traditional clothes, which are very similar to the Spanish colonial style: the man looks like matadores, and the women like the Andalucia ones. But the belts, or champi, are backing before the Spanish colonization.

Harvesting totora on Lake Titicaca

Taquile, as the other Uros(Andamani, Suriqui, Isala del Sol), is artficially made from totora, a reed abounding in the shallows of the lake. It is a still untouched and unspoiled interesting island, where you can find Pre Inca ruins and a well organized rural society.

Traditional clothes on Taquile

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