Lake TiticacaNowhere in history can there be found a more fruitful marriage of sublime courage and n

Lake TiticacaNowhere in history can there be found a more fruitful marriage of sublime courage and naked green than in the personalities of the conquistadores, the Spanish conquerors of Central and South America. In 1535, with Peru subjugated, and already rich beyond all dreams and riches, Diego de Almagro left with his partner Francisco Pizarro in Cuzco, the Inca capital, and marched south into the unknown. His quest, and that of the 570 troops who accompanied him, was for yet more gold. Their route took them across the high arid plateaus of what is now Bolivia and Argentina, over the Andes, and down to the coastal jungles of Chile. Men and horses froze to death in the mountain passes, chocked in the rarified air of the plateaus, roasted within their armour in deserts. And there was no gold.That they had accomplished one of the great exploratory adventures was of little consolation and less interest. However, along the way, even for those single-minded men, there were things that filled them with wonder. High on the plateau where Peru and Bolivia now meet, they encountered a vast island sea of an incredible blue, beyond which were glacier-shouldered mountains glittering against a perfect sky. People sailed its waters in strange boats made out of reeds. That was how outsiders first came to Lake Titicaca, in its splendid setting against the 21,000ft (6400m) range of the Cordillera Real. But even if the Spanish were moved by the scene, to the peoples native to the place, it was, and is, sacred. The high peaks are ‘the abodes of Gods’, or are perhaps deities themselves. To the Aymara people, who live by the lake, its waters are the womb from which Viracocha, the white and bearded representative of the Sun and Earth, emerged to teach men how to build, grow food and make reed boats.Lake Titicaca is the largest of South America’s lakes, with an area of about 3200sq miles (8300km2). It lies 12,505ft (3812m) above sea level, but even then it is not the worlds highest lake; there are much higher ones in the Himalayas. But it is the worlds highest navigable waterway for large vessels, and has been since 1862, when a steamer was carried up in sections and reassembled on shore. Lake Titicaca marks the division in the Andes – to the north, the climate becomes steadily more temperate, and to the south, progressively more harsh. More that 25 rivers empty their waters into Titicaca; the largest, the Ramis, draining about two-fifths of the entire Titicaca Basin, enters the north-western corner of the lake. One small river, the Desaguadero, drains the lake at its southern end. This single outlet empties only 5 percent of the lake’s excess water; the rest is lost by evaporation under the fierce sun and strong winds of the dry Altiplano. Its shores are about the southern limit of year-round human habitation, and of successful crop-raising. Potatoes are grown there; maize and barely, which do not ripen, are grown for animal feed.Fishing in the lake is now poor. Introduced rainbow trout devoured the native catfish and were themselves overfished in turn. The chief native denizen (a person, animal, or plant, that is found at a particular place) of the lake is a frog, reported to be the size of a rat. But as it breathes only by extracting oxygen from the water through its skin and cannot survive in the air, it is seldom seen. Many of the Aymara people still live much as their forefathers did when they were glimpsed by the conquistadores. Unlike the Spanish and later visitors, they do not suffer from mountain sickness, for they have larger hearts and lungs than normal, and more red blood corpuscles to counteract the effects of oxygen deficiency. They construct rafts of totora reed by the shore, and on them build houses of the same material, and even plant vegetables plots upon them. Totora is also used to make their boats which, despite their frail appearance, are immensely tough. Larger versions would be perfectly seaworthy.Check out the YouTube video on the people at Lake Titicaca who live on these floating islands: http://bit.ly/1NyQMVf and http://bit.ly/1ONEAyY (primary language Spanish).~ JMPhoto credit: http://bit.ly/1Qod7We & http://bit.ly/1OHp9KmMore Info:The Story of the Conquistadors: http://bbc.in/1RxaYbDLake Titicaca: http://bit.ly/1NBDDpZAymara: http://bit.ly/1ObeHpYCordillera Real: http://bit.ly/1HOm0r2 -- source link

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