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Travel - Lake Titicaca

Bolivia — Abode of the Inca Gods

During the first half hour it takes to drive from El Alto Airport to downtown La Paz our cabbie hardly stopped talking long enough to take a breath of rarified Andean air. He pointed out the soccer stadium, the museum, the markets, the churches, the Ministry of the Navy – Ministry of the Navy?

He anticipated my surprise, and without missing a beat recounted the story of a state visit to Bolivia by the president of Peru.

"Why do you need a Ministry of the Navy when you have no seacoast?" asked the Peruvian president.

"Why not?" replied the Bolivian leader. "You have a Ministry of Justice and you have no justice."

Probably just an urban legend but later, standing on the shore of Lake Titicaca, watching a flotilla of boats milling around the dock at Copacabana, I could appreciate why landlocked Bolivia might justify having a navy. For years I have been fascinated by this vast body of water which Bolivia shares with Peru. Abode of the Gods, birthplace of the Sun and the Inca people, and home to obscure cultures that predate the Incas by thousands of years, Lake Titicaca is a place steeped in legend and history. The name conjures up images of reed boats, deserted ruins that were witness to human sacrifice, submerged temples and buried gold. I had expected to be impressed but looking across the rippled blue waters extending to the distant horizon, Lake Titicaca was much bigger than I had imagined. Its billing as the world’s highest navigable lake may be debated but with an area of 9,000 square kilometers and an elevation of 3,820 metres (12,500 feet), it is undeniably both large and high.

Copacabana is a bright, clean city surrounding the beautifully kept courtyard of a sparkling white Moorish-style cathedral built in the 1600s and adorned with blue ceramic tile. The broad cobblestone streets are lined with shops and restaurants specializing in trucha criolla (salmon trout) from the lake. During our first meal, sitting at a candle-lit table enjoying the music of a small Latin band, we were surprised to see a native woman come in the front door with a huge basket of freshly caught fish. The proprietor greeted her, took a scale off the wall, weighed the catch, paid her from the till, and trotted back to the kitchen.

The next morning we headed north along the Copacabana Peninsula for a 15 kilometre hike to Yampupata. The route leads through small villages and farmland, along narrow walkways between adobe houses thatched with reeds from the lake, and past terraced fields where men were plowing with teams of oxen. On steeper slopes groups of Aymara women wearing long, brightly coloured traditional skirts and bowler hats tilled the soil with crude mattocks, while children dropped seed-potatoes into the furrows.

A couple hours out of Copacabana we left the lakeshore and followed an old, stone-paved Inca road up a steep hill to a lookout. Even after two weeks of acclimatization in the high Andes we were conscious of the 4,000 metre elevation and careful to pace ourselves. But the view across the lake and the barren upland of the Altiplano to the snow-covered peaks of the Cordillera Real was worth every step of the climb.

Back down at the lakeshore we stopped at Sicuani to eat our bagged lunches and buy a drink from an enterprising native couple who build and offer rides in "balsas," the classic reed boats of Titicaca. We were joined for lunch by a scrounging black alpaca. True to its heritage, this small relative of the camel efficiently disposed of our garbage – eagerly downing everything from orange peels to paper bags.

From Yampupata, a collection of adobe houses at the northern end of the Copacabana Peninsula, a short boat ride took us to the Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) where we stayed at a private hostel consisting of two small, reed-thatched adobe huts. Located on a bench near the Pilko Kiana Inca ruins, the place has a commanding view of the lake and, despite the modest accommodation, the owners provided a great meal of lake trout and a brief musical interlude before a thunderous electrical storm brought the day to an end. Tables and chairs were moved out into the rain to make room for our sleeping bags on the dirt floor.

The next morning we climbed the Escalera del Inca (Inca Stairway) where fresh water from natural springs cascaded down stone aquaducts into terraced rock gardens on either side of broad stone steps. We passed groups of people heading down from Yumani, a small community high on the ridge above us. Women carrying water jugs and men leading donkeys were on their way to collect water from the springs.

Beyond Yumani the trail follows a broad uninhibited ridge to the 4,032 metre crest of the island. We were buffeted by a cold, damp wind but Aymara women, in skirts and bowler hats, were already tending small herds of sheep on barren, scrub-covered slopes.

After a cold lunch break, huddled behind a small stone hut, we descended to the Chincana ruins near the northern end of the island. Known locally as El Laberinto (Labyrinth), this maze of stone walls and low doorways leading to tiny rock cubicles must once have been a major Inca settlement. Judging from the height of the doorways the people who occupied this space must have been small, but some of the rocks they moved and stacked would challenge a backhoe. One particularly large slab of rock, perched on four rock legs and surrounded by a circle of rock seats, forms the Mesa Ceremonica (ceremonial table), which is thought to have been the site of human and animal sacrifice.

From Chincana we descended to the town of Cha’llapampa, which straddles a slender isthmus between the main island and fertile, terraced fields of the Co Kollabaya Peninsula. The Esmiralda Hotel where we checked in boasts a tiny courtyard with a cold-water tap for bathing and two prominent toilets. The abbreviated doors on the latter provide privacy for the central body only. With feet and head exposed the occupant, even in hovering position, is able to continue his or her conversation with others in the courtyard.

A small museum in Cha’llapampa displays gold and stone artifacts recovered from Marka Puma, an archeological site two kilometers north of Isla del Sol. Referred to locally as Ciudad Submergida, the "submerged city" contains a massive temple and stone walkways all under eight metres of water. Their origin remains a mystery but considering the erratic rise and fall of Titicaca, Marka Puma may be only one of the lake’s concealed mysteries. Scientists suggest that the shores of Titicaca were up to 45 metres below present several times during the last 10,000 years.

For our last dinner on Isla del Sol we were treated to a traditional Aymara meal in the tiny clay-walled dining room of the Esmiralda hotel. A bland repast of tough corn, boiled beans, freeze-dried potatoes and curd cheese left me with a new respect for the hardy folk who live on the Altiplano.

After dinner Betty and I climbed back up on the ridge, watched the sun go down across the border in Peru, and contemplated what lay ahead of us at the other end of Lake Titicaca.