Lake Titicaca · Where the Sun Rose

Lake Titicaca is one of the highest navigable lakes in the world, its surface at three thousand eight hundred metres, the water so deep in colour that it looks black.

In Inca legend the sun rose from an island in the lake, and the first Inca king and his sister set out from here with a golden staff to find ground it would sink into — and where it sank was Cusco.

The Uru people of the lake weave floating islands, boats and houses from reeds, living on ground the water can carry away. They say the lake is female, and moves on its own.

Folklore / Puno · Peru / Time immemorial