| Some facts |
|
|
| Your
opinion |
|
|
| Regions |
|
|
| WEB
resources |
|
|
|
| Puno and the lake Titicaca |
|
2000-08-16 12:10:00
|
Puno was just a nightmare, and we had to stay there for two days. We were all reminded about the movie with the title 'The longest day'
|
| See the whole picture |
The city Puno is situated on 3.800m. above sea level, and is just a big disaster. The bad smell of shit and urine embraced the city. It was a lot of poverty, and a lot of unfinished houses and roads. This city is just to be used as a transit town, and you should never use more time here than absolutely neccessary.
A funny thing though, was a possibility to rent one of the unfinished houses, and the add said 'You will feel as home'.
The main attraction is the lake Titicaca, which Hege declared was much smaller than the Norwegian lake Mjøsa. This proved to be very wrong, and Heges nickname of course became Miss Mjøsa. The lake is huge, and the highest lake in the world with boat traffic. Anyway, Copacabana in Bolivia, is a better startingpoint for the Titicaca lake.
On the way down to the harbour we went through the local foodmarket where you could buy just about anything, dead or alive. In the harbour of Puno, two of the main passenger steam boats are located, Yavari and Yapura. These boats where ordered from England in 1862 and transported in 2766 pieces around the Cape Horn to Arica, from where they were moved by train to Tacna, then hauled by mule over the Andes to Puno - a process which took six years. The ships were assembled in Puno, and the Yavari was launched on Christmas Day 1870, follwed by Yapura seventeen months later.
After two of the most boring days in our lives, we took the bus to LaPaz, Bolivia.
Some facts: In fact, there are many navigable lakes at altitudes above 4000m, such as Lake Junin in Peru's central Andes, but Lake Titicaca is called the worlds highest simply because it had frequent passenger boats and is better known than other higher lakes, which lack passenger craft. If you like trivia, note that Lake Titicaca - at over 170km in length - is South Americas largest lake and the largest lake in the world above 2000m. |
| << Back |
|
|
|
|
|
|
