Peru’s Inca heartland offers you floating islands, breath-taking views and a lesson in history
Peru does cold like few places on earth. At night, temperatures at high altitudes frequently drop below zero. Yet, after 10 days in the country, I hadn’t spotted any kind of indoor heating system. To make us endure the night chill, our travel co-ordinators sent us to spend two nights at an elevation of 12,500 feet on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

The city of Puno is the most convenient departure for Lake Titicaca’s various islands. With our bags loaded in the bus, we headed from Cuzco, a city in southeastern Peru, to Puno. The journey took us through what is sometimes called ‘a sacred landscape’, the Inca heartland, which connects Cuzco and Lake Titicaca, from where legend holds that the Incas originated.
The lakeside city of Puno is unspectacular. Most of its buildings are made of brown mud bricks, the streets are unpaved and traffic consists mainly of bicycles and tuk-tuk style taxis.

Much of daily life in Puno revolves around the marketplace. Tanned women in shrunken bowler hats, vibrant shawls and voluminous skirts ply their fruit and flowers, handmade panpipes and ponchos, with children at their heels. The town’s dull muddiness is in sparkling contrast to the turquoise water of the lake.

At 3,000 sq miles, Lake Titicaca is the highest of its size in the world. There are more than 40 floating islands sprinkled across it. These are made by layering totora reed atop root clods. New reeds are laid weekly as those below decompose. The inhabitants cling to a traditional way of life centred around fishing, farming and weaving.
Our first stop next morning was Islas Uros. The Uros people, who live on floating islands, began their unusual floating life centuries ago in an effort to escape hostile cultures on the mainland. Theirs is a humble lifestyle: the ground they live on, the food they eat, their boats and homes are all made of reed.

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