Lake Titicaca, Peru, February 2001
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On the way to Taquile Island we stopped at the floating islands.
These are built of reeds and have to be constantly replenished with new reeds as the old ones on the bottom
rot away. At one time, they were populated by the Uro people, but intermarriage with the Aymara, has caused
the Uro language to be lost.
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The following pictures are not in any real order -- they're basically pictures that didn't neatly fit
anywhere else. The first two are of Lake Titicaca from the Bolivian side.
After leaving Lake Titicaca, we drove west, towards Cuzco. Along the way, we stopped by a farm house
by the side of the road. The crop in the terrace is various kinds of potatoes. My recollection is
that there are several thousand species of potato in South America, of which something on the
order of three hundred are cultivated.
Finally, we came across a herd of llama and alpaca. I have difficulty telling them apart, but I think the
first photograph is an alpaca, and the second is a llama (pronounced in the Spanish fashion, yama).
In addition to being shorn for wool, both are also used for meat. Llama is fairly tough and gamey.
How does alpaca taste? Just like llama...
