Titiqaqa Lake

Lake Titicaca fills a vast basin high in the Andes, its blue waters surrounded by snow mountains, grasslands and densely inhabited shores. Islands and peninsulas break the expanse of the lake, while reeds grow along sheltered margins. For Andean peoples this inland sea was both a source of livelihood and a sacred landscape.

The Incas revered Titicaca as a place of origins. On the Island of the Sun they built temples and other structures for ceremonies associated with the sun and ancestral beginnings. Their worship followed much older traditions: centuries earlier, the people of Tiwanaku placed offerings in the waters near the island. By the time of the Spanish conquest, the shores sustained one of the densest populations in the Andes, divided among communities whose fields and herds occupied the surrounding plateau.