Discovering the tresors of Lake Titicaca
Lake Titicaca is said to be the highest navigatable water surface in the world. Unfortunately we did not have our Kitesurf gear with us, so we could not verify it ourselves. However, we did see some fishermen cruising around in their triangle-shaped sailing boats, that surprisingly remembered us of the Jangadas we'd seen in northern Brazil.
Titicaca is the center of the ancient Inka culture. We were enchanted by the beauty of the holy Isla del Sol, where only half millenium ago, the Inkas used to pilgrim to a big sacred rock to swear that they would never rob others or lie to them, and that they would never be lazy in order to support the prosperity of the Inka empire.
Beforehand, we had visited the pre-Inkan ruins in Tihuanacu. This civilisation proved to have had a great influence on the Inkas: Not only did we learn about the holy trilogy of Heaven, Earth and the Underworld with their respective wild animals (condor, eagle, puma, lama, snake, frog etc.), but also we saw that the people of Tihuanacu had great geometric capabilities in building their sacred sites, as well as managing to handle huge blocks of stone.
In contrary to this, the Floating Islands of Uros on the Peruan side near Puno seemed like a cheap replica found in Disneyland or the Universal Studios. Of course we could not miss out since everyone was talking about it. What we found, were dozens of tiny, picturesque islands made of seagrass, inhabited by Peruan micro-communities who did nothing else than pose for the tourists and present handycrafts that were not even self-made!!! Apparently they had already existed before the tourist specimen came up. But somehow we did feel like in a bad film, especially after our captain stopped the boat for a lunchbreak and managed to block the bilge-pump. We must have given quite a pathetic image as the wind was blowing us into a Floating Island that was just being constructed by its future inhabitants.
To view some less pathetic images, click on the link to the Titicaca photo set!
Lake Titicaca is said to be the highest navigatable water surface in the world. Unfortunately we did not have our Kitesurf gear with us, so we could not verify it ourselves. However, we did see some fishermen cruising around in their triangle-shaped sailing boats, that surprisingly remembered us of the Jangadas we'd seen in northern Brazil.
Titicaca is the center of the ancient Inka culture. We were enchanted by the beauty of the holy Isla del Sol, where only half millenium ago, the Inkas used to pilgrim to a big sacred rock to swear that they would never rob others or lie to them, and that they would never be lazy in order to support the prosperity of the Inka empire.
Beforehand, we had visited the pre-Inkan ruins in Tihuanacu. This civilisation proved to have had a great influence on the Inkas: Not only did we learn about the holy trilogy of Heaven, Earth and the Underworld with their respective wild animals (condor, eagle, puma, lama, snake, frog etc.), but also we saw that the people of Tihuanacu had great geometric capabilities in building their sacred sites, as well as managing to handle huge blocks of stone.
In contrary to this, the Floating Islands of Uros on the Peruan side near Puno seemed like a cheap replica found in Disneyland or the Universal Studios. Of course we could not miss out since everyone was talking about it. What we found, were dozens of tiny, picturesque islands made of seagrass, inhabited by Peruan micro-communities who did nothing else than pose for the tourists and present handycrafts that were not even self-made!!! Apparently they had already existed before the tourist specimen came up. But somehow we did feel like in a bad film, especially after our captain stopped the boat for a lunchbreak and managed to block the bilge-pump. We must have given quite a pathetic image as the wind was blowing us into a Floating Island that was just being constructed by its future inhabitants.
To view some less pathetic images, click on the link to the Titicaca photo set!
posted by Patrick Jeannerat at 5/13/2007 05:20:00 PM
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