The Magical and Mysterious Floating Uros Islands of Peru
The Magical and Mysterious Floating Uros Islands of Peru
Nobody knows exactly when the people of Uros starting building floating islands on the world's highest navigable lake, but what they accomplished is spectacular.
CINDY OTIS
06.06.18 5:13 AM ET
“You can’t bring your wheelchair to Uros,” my guide told me. He pointed to a collapsible and slightly dilapidated manual wheelchair nearly a foot too wide for me. “Use this one.”
I had just arrived in Puno, Peru, to see the floating Uros islands on Lake Titicaca, the 120-mile long lake that sits between Peru and Bolivia. To get there, I had flown to Lima and then the southwestern desert town of Arequipa, before driving southeast through Colca Canyon across the Andes mountains in a van. At each stop we made, my guides had said the same thing—my 200-pound electric wheelchair would not be able to get around whatever we were seeing that day. But besides a monastery in Arequipa that was almost all stairs and Machu Picchu, my guides had mostly been wrong.
I like to think of my wheelchair as the Little Engine that Could. It has taken me over glaciers in Iceland and across the sand and stone of Petra’s ancient canyon, through ancient jungle temples in Bali and over miles of cobblestone streets all over Europe. But something in my guide Alex’s concerned face told me to go with it. In the loaned manual wheelchair, Alex, his friend Max, who came along for his strength, and I, boarded a small boat in Puno’s harbor. As Max lifted me and then the loaner chair into the boat, I was already glad I had taken it instead.
Out on the water, it felt like I was taking the first proper breath I’d had in days. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable body of water in the world at nearly 13,000 feet in elevation, but it was still a lower altitude than most of the route I’d taken to get there. During that drive, I had learned altitude sickness is not a joke. Any time we went over 14,000 feet, I got nauseated and my heart raced. It felt like I was suffocating whenever I tried to lay down, and the adrenaline from my racing heart made it impossible to sleep. I had been living on coca tea—the main ingredient in cocaine that’s completely harmless and an altitude sickness lifesaver in its plant-based form.
More:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-magical-and-mysterious-floating-uros-islands-of-peru
Many more images at:
https://tinyurl.com/y7lzn9s9
Environment and energy:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127117826