by When someone suggests I go at dawn, there’s always a pause … but part of the joy of travel is that you keep saying yes, even with bad thoughts. Pablo, my guide, warned me: the dawn can be incredible, don’t miss it. So when the first bright pink light hits the east curtain, I jump up.
From the terrace, there is a steep drop to the surface of the lake, which has the patina of hammered copper. A series of seagulls dance across. Seagulls at 4,000 meters in the mountains! Far away the snow-capped peaks of Bolivia’s Illampu rise from a rose-colored shore and cast the immaculate blue of the sky where the last stars are fading. Pablo appears, then Francisco, and we stand in silence, awestruck, until Francisco can no longer contain himself. “Come on. The fishing nets are waiting.”
Lake Titicaca is one of the best sights in the world. A vast inland sea set in an unlikely sky. If it were in Europe, its surface would be above the highest peaks in Switzerland and Austria, and its area would be more than twice that of all its lakes combined. As we follow Francisco down to his boat, Pablo gives us a series of amazing facts about his homeland – he was born on the biggest island next to this one, Isla de Luna. “The first Inca king arose from that water. Seahorses live there. Cities are lost. Look!” Reaching the shore, he bends and picks up a stone. I make out a constellation of tiny fossilized sea shells.
I am on the second stage of my journey from the height of the Andes down to the mouth of the Amazon. From Cusco in Peru, I caught a bus to the busy city of Puno on the shores of Titicaca before crossing the border into Bolivia, then caught a boat taxi out to a pair of islands in the lake, Sun and Moon – where I was now. If Titicaca was never a serious contender as the source of the Amazon (it is in the mountains to the north), it is the cultural heart of the Natives. The Bolivian end of the lake is much quieter, catering mostly to local vacationers and backpackers.
I can’t stop laughing. It’s so amazing to be out on this amazing stretch of water at dawn
Francisco releases the boat and we move out towards the sun. Titicaca is one of those places that we usually only hear about when something goes wrong. Before I saw it, I knew it was suffering from reduced water levels, over-extraction, over-fishing, rampant pollution, invasive species and the extinction of some endemic fish species. In my mind, this desperation was sinking into a sump pond next to a motorway slip, no doubt like this. I can’t stop laughing. It’s so amazing to be out on this amazing stretch of water at dawn.
Francisco stops us at the southern tip of the island and pulls up a net. It’s the small fish that come up ipsi, a common endemic species. Among them is a calanchi, says Francisco “rare these days”. I make sure it goes back in.
I came out to these two rocky islands in the Bolivian part of Titicaca to see the effect of tourism. Francisco tells me about his childhood. “In those days, there was no tourism. In fact, there were political prisoners on the island. My father was a revolutionary and in 1972 he helped some of them to escape. One person became the vice president of the country.” He laughs and shakes the net, releasing a shower of live money into the boat and over the side. “After the prison was closed,” he says, “some experts identified the ruins near my house as the Incan Temple of the Virgin. Then people started coming to visit.”
At that time, he says, all the men on the island, about 27 of them, were full-time fishermen. “There are only seven fishermen left now – all the others work in tourism.” He started a homestay, others found work as guides or taxi drivers. It ends up pulling in the net. We have done a good job. Francisco is laughing. “And there are many more fish.”
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Back at the house, Francisco’s wife, Maria, has brunch and likes to prepare dinner the night before everything arrives from Titicaca and its shores. “Life is better now,” she says. “Tourism jobs mean young people don’t leave.” As she talks, she is spinning dyed wool, weaving intricately patterned belts and bands that she sells to visitors. I ask about the patterns. “I learned them from my grandmother and from her, and so on. It’s like a history book.”
Francisco laughed. “A book that no one can read.”
He wants to add two more rooms to the three he has already built. I wonder if it will add wifi? He shook his head. “On this island we are already connected – to the sun, the moon and the stars. What else do we want?”
I stroll around the temple ruins and head across the hill and down to the only village on the island. Here llamas and sheep graze on the shore next to a fleet of waterfowl: Andean coots and geel, but not the flightless endemic Titicaca hawk. The island has a regular boat service from the mainland only at weekends so now, in the middle of the week, it’s blissfully quiet. I swam out among the birds, surprised to find the water less cold than expected.
In the afternoon, Pablo and I transfer to Isla del Sol, his home and a bigger, more populated place with a daily ferry. “Most visitors only stay an hour,” he says, “so it’s quiet in the evening.” He comes from a fishing family and has seen how tourism can change lives. “I grew up in poverty. We only ate fish and potatoes.” We will walk to the Temple of the Sun, built around 150BCE and then the Spanish conquistadores removed its gold and idols in 1538.
I am staying at a simple hostel on the hill, run by Maria and her daughter. “There are no big hotel chains here,” she says. “The community would not allow it. Everything is small scale and local. We built the place ourselves and carried everything up here on our two donkeys. There are no cars on the island.”
Outside my room I see a huge hummingbird on the flowering trees, the species is common here. An old man walks by with some tools, heading to the league fields being prepared for the expected rains. Things are very dry. The much-reported drought in the Amazon is the result of no rain in the Andes, an annual dry spell exacerbated by El Niño and climate change.
There are no big hotel chains here. The public would not allow it. Everything is small scale and local. We built the place ourselves
Maria
Attitudes here are stoical, it’s Covid they want to talk about: the experience feels raw and recent. Many have lost their income and some hostels on the island are still closed. Later on my trip, I hear how some people who needed money took up temporary jobs in the narcotics trade, going to coca growing areas to work as pickers, cooks and laborers. Cocaine production around the world (meaning Bolivia, Peru and Colombia) has recently increased, now expanding over an area larger than France combined, and causing massive deforestation and pollution ( coca plantations are heavily sprayed with pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilizers). Low soil fertility for rainforest locations means that the illegal farms regularly move in, destroying more forest.
After a night on Isla del Sol, I transfer by water taxi back to the small town of Copacabana, where some swanky new buildings are said to be the result of coca-dollar earnings. The atmosphere, however, is far from a Netflix-like narco world: it is a peaceful, easygoing town with a special mass in the basilica for the patron saint, Francis, as the main event of the day. His image is completely carried around the square by women chola regalia bowler hats, vicuña wool shawls and layers of coats. For many, chola has become a symbol of indigenous tradition and pride.
Street dogs sleep through the enlarged pulpit in front of the famous icon of the Blessed Virgin, brought here by Tito Yupanqui in 1583, apparently a descendant of the Inca Emperor Atahualpa.
The next day, I spend several hours walking along the shores of the lake, searching for those elusive endemic ravens. I don’t get it, but I meet Anna, a wonderful old person chola, who shows me around his village, Sahuiña. This fishing community is trying to encourage tourism, but things are at an early stage.
There is a village hall with comfortable rooms for rent at ridiculously low rates, but it looks useless. Anna and her friends invite me to a lunch of five types of boiled potatoes. However, I clearly do not eat with the appetite and gusto expected of such a feast. I can feel their anxiety. Local visitors like big, noisy restaurants built on reed rafts and plenty of boiled potatoes, but foreigners seem to be harder to please. Later, the villagers who are packing reeds on donkeys stop to watch me, while they watch the birds. Finally, I say goodbye and walk to find the flock of Chilean flaming that have flown in.
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That evening I walk up the mountain by the lake that overlooks Copacabana. There is a shrine at the top where worshipers offer symbolic models of things they would like God to place. The most common prayer seems to be for a pickup truck, although more ambitious supplicants ask for a luxury bus or a concrete mixer. After expressing their wishes, everyone goes over to look at the lake where the sun is setting. Two girls share an Instagram moment; some backpackers talk about sunsets in other countries; one man ignores his young daughter’s playful demands. Without any divine or human intervention, the sun enters Peru and turns Titicaca into a golden furnace. The girls put their phones down; the backpackers fall silent, and the man picks up his daughter and give her a cuddle.
The trip was provided by Sumak Travel. 12-day private tour of Lake Titicaca (Sun and Moon Islands), Uyuni Salt Flat and the Amazon rainforest (close to Rurrenabaque) from £1,485pp including accommodation, domestic flights, guided activities, transport and some meals.
The third part of Kevin’s Amazon adventure will appear online on July 1
