Lake Titicaca
November 10, 2025 in Peru ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C
Leaving Juliaca is a complicated business, the recommended street is fully occupied with a market and the pace is very slow. Finally we manage to turn off towards the Capachica peninsula, thus avoiding the other big town of Puno. Sadly, this begins with 20km strewn with thrash. Things get better as we arrive in the peninsula and after a little hill we get our first sighting of LAKE TITICACA!!!
The lake does not look at all like in school text books:- superflat and bordered by reeds. In reality we see mountains, cliffs, sandy beaches, waves, pastures with sheep, cows, donkeys, pigs... and houses.
A few statistics from wikipedia: Titicaca is very large, 8,372 km2, only the 18th in the world, but much larger than 580 km2 of lake Geneva (Lac Léman). Significantly it is much higher (altitude 3810m vs. 373m).
We remark housing projects, tiny houses seemingly for temporary workers or poor families, mainly out of view of the lake. Also, what seems to be an effort to provide every plot and even some fields with toilets. This all shows the awareness of authorities to the great touristic and environmental interest of the lake; though perhaps without understanding the impact of widespread scruffy development.
Among other interests is a local tradition (mainly in the Tranquile Island) of wearing hats or shawls with pompoms, indicating the marital status. Two large pompoms sewn onto them mean that a woman is single, while one small pompom means she’s already married. Single men wear red and white caps with a pompom at the top. If a man is looking for a girlfriend, the pompom is moved to the side of his head. When he gets married, he then switches to an all red cap and no pompom. Importantly, the men do the knitting: no knitting, no girlfriend and no marriage!
After some searching, at the end of a dirt track along the shore, we find our hotel "la casa de Felix". It is a vermillon red building facing the lake, with beautiful view from the room. Felix, a robust Quechua entrepreneur, is welcoming, well organised, and ready to solve any problem for us. We decide to stay for a couple nights!Read more