Uros Floating Islands & Sillustani Tombs

We are in Puno, a city at 12,000 feet elevation—our highest on this trip. Our hotel is on a “bulb” of land in Lake Titicaca, and every room has a lake view. The lake is 100 miles long and is shared by both Peru and Bolivia. It is the highest navigable lake in the world.

A motor boat picked us up from our hotel to take us out to Uros to meet the Aymara people, an indigenous culture who live on islands built from reeds in Lake Titicaca. There are about 100 islands, each holding an extended family. Each island has a president or chief, and the cluster of islands overall has a mayor.

The president of one island welcomed us with a speech in the Aymara language. Fortunately, our local guide could interpret for us. He showed us how they build their floating islands, starting from cutting the thick roots of the reed beds from the 88,000 acres of reeds on the mainland. The chunks of matted reed roots will float, and then reeds are layered on top, and finally houses and cooking areas are built. They need to add fresh reeds to the top every few weeks, but an island will usually last about 40 to 50 years. The islands are anchored so they don’t float around. Otherwise, they might end up in Bolivia without a passport!

We were treated to a demonstration of the bird calls the men use to attract water birds for hunting. We also got to travel on one of their traditional reed boats to another island. Thor Heyerdahl commissioned the Aymara people of Uros to build a boat, the Ra II, for his expeditions in 1969-1970.

The Uros people are not strictly living a primitive lifestyle. They have small solar panels to power an LED bulb or two, and the president’s house had a TV. There is a school and health clinic onshore, as well as using their own healers and midwives. They also use motor boats for fishing and going to market in town. Many of the younger people left to live and get jobs on the mainland during COVID, since their main source of income, tourism, was gone and they weren’t adept at the traditional way of supporting themselves with hunting and planting.

After lunch at an alpaca farm, we set off to see another pre-Incan archaeological site—this time to a burial grounds for the nobility. Large funerary towers known as "chullpas" are distributed across the Sillustani site, representing various eras and styles of construction.

There is evidence of occupation of the site from as far back as 800 B.C., but the structures we saw likely dated from 1100-1400. Over time, the tomb construction progressed from completely underground to tall towers. A lightning strike destroyed part of one tower, which allows a view of the layers of construction.Leggi altro