psd photography - Lake Titicaca

The weather gods seemed to disapprove of my stay here. A heavy hailstorm left ankle-deep freezing sludge on the street on my first night in Puno. Ominous thunder, with rapid-fire fork-lightning perpetually rolled across the land; always a threat and occasionally soaking me through with precipitation. Puno is in the deep south of Peru and clings on to the high slopes of the Collao Plateau, then eases its way down to the gentler shores of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable waterway in the Andes, and indeed the world. It was the cradle of the Incan civilisation and is a name that evokes deep memories in me, back to childhood, where somehow I learned the name, I cannot remember how. Had I displeased the weather gods? I do not know. But I was going to test their patience; I was staying.

Heading south on a daytrip, winding up a valley towards the summit, the prospect was favourable. It looked calm, the sun shone. As the cramped minibus crawled over the ledge of the hill, the horizon straightened and the views lengthened. We had reached the plateau. The minibus dropped my wife Heather and I off in the middle of nowhere and tried to speed off, but with despairingly slow acceleration, which made me chuckle. I surveyed the surroundings; we were at the bottom of a shallow basin, with the outer edge many miles away on either side, as if we were atom-sized people in the centre of a dinner plate. The scenery was bleak; only low scrubby grass and a scattering of diminutive-looking table mountains made up the picture. There was an enigmatic wild side to this gentle looking plain. It was a wilderness and had clearly not been tamed by man. Far to the east the clouds gathered and the skies were darkening. Beyond even my vision, up in the wild, high Andes some gods had thrown a storm down into the basin. Would it come our way? How long would it take to reach us? Our table mountain awaited, we had to be quick.

After zigzagging up the hillside for half an hour, some large stone structures breached the horizon, and looked completely out of place with the monotonous tones of the plains. Clearly man's creation, this had to be the first of the chullpas, and what we had come to see. They were funerary towers, the final resting places for the the nobility of the Aymara people, one of the early tribes of settlers of this land. The chullpas were their 'pyramids'. Unlike the pyramids of Egypt, these structures were boxlike, or cylindrical, and substantially smaller, more on a par with a council house than a tower block. Like most of the pyramids, these tombs were now stripped bare inside, no remains, no valuables, no wall paintings. The empty stone towers announce to passers-by that man was here in some distant past. A stentorian sound physically shook the plateau, causing us to look up and to the east. Blackening, mushrooming clouds foretold what I already knew; the storm was coming our way.

Our combined judgement of the distance of the approaching storm and the time it would take us to get back down to the road and flag down a mini-bus gave us the confidence to explore further. I scrambled through a low opening in a chullpa wall, into a cool, inky-black stone cavern. Even with the wedge of light spilling in through the door, the darkness above was opaque, so I used my camera flash on strobe to pierce through and view the design of the vaulted stone ceiling. There was something poignant about the simplicity of the towers echoing the simplicity of the landscape that I couldn't put my finger on entirely. It seemed to allude to the lives of the Aymara, their beliefs and world view. I try to get in touch with something tangible about the Aymara, but it is difficult here. Visibly, there is only the chullpas, and the plain the Aymara chose to build them on. Both quite austere. There must be a reason that these fortified towers are the only traces of their civilisation. The approaching weather front was deteriorating, now being driven apart by numerous lightning bolts. Heather and I scuttled back down to the roadside. Visible now were not one, but two distinct storms loose on the plains, both competing with each other with voluminous juddering sounds and flashing pyrotechnics. This was a wild place. Who could put down roots here? Our escape came just in time, and we squeezed into a tiny minibus, and headed back to Puno, leaving the battling storms to their contest over the harsh plains.

Not wishing to test the wrath of the gods further, we put some distance between ourselves and Puno the following day by taking to the waters of Lake Titicaca, a pleasure on all sensory levels. The sun was gracefully hot; the oddly pleasant diesel fumes from the boat wafted back over me as the boat bobbed its way forward, the churning wake cutting a clear channel through the ubiquitous vivid green pond weed; the views were sublime. Looking back to shore, I now saw Puno in its context of a town at the foot of a plateau more clearly. Already the cumulo-nimbus formations were building above, ready to charge down the hill malevolently once a sufficient intensity had been reached. In balance, the skies over Lake Titicaca were azure, the water was calm. Lake Titicaca. How many times in my life have I heard or spoken that name? It is another milestone on my journey, and it filled me with pride and satisfaction now that I was here, actually dipping my hands into the cool Andean water.

All around the boat now were tall reeds, the same reeds which provide so much for the Uros people, those we were going to visit. Their floating island homes are as famed as they are remarkably engineered. The islands themselves, the houses, the boats and many of the crafts are made from the locally harvested reeds. Reputed to offer protection from any land marauders in times of strife, the floating islands have successfully preserved the Uros tribe for generations. Modern living has not passed the Uros by, there are three schools on the islands, public spaces and solar power. They also frequent Puno when they need or want to.

Heather and I elected to stay on an island and chat to the locals, over-riding an insistent skipper, instead of moving on with a needlessly hurried tour. The Uros people's existence is as permanent and as flimsy as the platforms they live on. Made only of reeds and up to 10-feet thick, they constantly rot away underneath. To counteract this natural erosion they get frequently re-matted on top, with new layers of reeds. Although soft underfoot - walking is as draining as running on a fine sand beach - they are dry and comfortable to live on. The Uros we met were warm and friendly and equally curious about us. After learning that it was my birthday, someone took the time to secretly shred some paper and then scattered it over my head, a birthday shower. I took it as a great compliment.

Warm air from the lake counteracts the storm fronts descending from the plateau, so where Puno gets a regular battering, the Uros village enjoys a more relaxed climate. Only once did I see the storm fronts penetrate far enough into the lake to cover the village. I happened to be on a boat and it was a profound experience. To be in the midst of a storm on open water, with bolts of lightning striking all around gave me butterflies. Normally I am pretty unflappable, but where was the exit strategy here? What would happen if the boat got struck? Once again, the gods let me off with a warning; I made it back to shore.

Climbing to high above Puno, 620 steps high to be exact, from the lookout of the Kuntur Wasi condor, the floating village of the Uros looked like a few colourful specks in a large expanse of blue water, surrounded itself by a larger mass of greenish land and all entrapped by the purest blue sky. Minute, but significant specks. Still there, hundreds of years after arriving. Black clouds rolled over the condor, the continual banging of thunder increased in volume. Soon it will be deafening and very frightening. The storm was on its way again. Time to descend. Some days later I read that a meteor travelled for hundreds of millions of miles and struck the ground close to Puno immediately after I left, as if to punctuate my visit with a full stop.

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