Taquile is an island on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca 45 km offshore from the city of Puno. About 1,700 people live on the island, which is 5.5 by 1.6 km in size (maximum measurements), with an area of 5.72 km². The highest point of the island is 4050 meters above sea level and the…
Year: 2011
Lake Titicaca, the Uros Islands
I’ll be posting my photos from the Lake Titicaca in two parts, beginning with this blog featuring the Uros Islands and its people. We disembarked from our train from Cusco in late afternoon and were escorted to our room at the nearby Libertador Hotel. We had a great view of the lake and I was…
Andean Explorer
After our return from Machu Picchu, we spent another night in Cusco and then boarded a train, the Andean Explorer for a 10 hour trip to Puno, located on Lake Titicaca. Ten hours may seem like a long time to be on a train, but I can’t ever recall a more enjoyable trip, via train…
Sacred Valley of the Incas
In the course of our return from Machu Picchu to Cusco, we disembarked from the train in Ollantaybambo to visit another site of Incan ruins and complete the trip to Cusco by van. Ollantaytambo is an attractive little town located at the western end of the Sacred Valley (about two and a half hours by…
Cusco
Cusco is a city in southeastern Peru, near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range. In 2007, the city had a population of 360,000 which is triple the figure of 20 years ago. Located on the eastern end of the Knot of Cusco, its altitude is around 3,400 m (11,200 ft). Cusco was the site of the historic capital…