Puno

On the banks of Lake Titicaca - the world highest navigable lake - displays the reminiscences of its origin through cave paintings and spearheads, testimony of our highland ancestor's life.

The Collao Plateau Is the geographical space, where ancient and Important cultures like Pucara and, later, Tiahuanaco, appeared.This is the region where, according to the legend, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo emerged from the sacred Lake Titicaca to found the Inca Empire.

During colonial times, the Spaniards established In Puno attracted by its mineral richness, bringing new cultural, social and economic Patterns along. The city of San Carlos de Puno was founded in 1668 and the priests, eager to convert the natives, motivated them to build beautiful churches.

LAKE TITICACA

Lake Titicaca is the world's highest navigable lake and the center of a region where thousands of subsistence farmers eke out a living fishing in its icy waters, growing potatoes in the rocky land at its edge or herding llama and alpaca at altitudes that leave Europeans and North Americans gasping for air. It is also where traces of the rich Indian past still stubbornly cling, resisting in past centuries the Spanish conquistadors' aggressive campaign to erase Inca and preInca cultures and, in recent times, the lure of modernization.

When Peruvians talk of turquoise blue Titacaca, they proudly note that it is so large it has waves. This, the most sacred body of water in the Inca empire and now the natural separation between Peru and Bolivia, has a surface area exceeding 8,000 square kilometers (3,100 square miles), not counting its more than 30 islands.

According to legend, this lake gave birth to the Inca civilization. Before the Incas, the lake and its islands were holy for the Aymará Indians, whose civilization was centered at the Tiahuanaco, now a complex of ruins on the Bolivian side of Titicaca but once a revered temple site with notably advanced irrigation techniques.