Trifter

Lake Titicaca high up in the Andes is the highest navigable lake in the world. It is 12,500 feet above sea level. The first steamship to cross the lake had to be carried up in pieces. It was named Yavari, a 164 tonnes, Scottish built boat which was transported by sea, around Cape Horn to Chile in 1862. Then it was taken by train to Peru, the parts were all unloaded onto mules and taken up to Puno which is by the lake.

Image via Wikipedia

The Peruvian Indians assembled the ship under the instruction of a Scottish engineer and it was finally put into service in 1874 as a ferry boat, crossing from Puno in Peru to La Paz in Bolivia, which was a 50 miles trip. 

Image via Wikipedia

It is now used as a floating warehouse by the Peruvian navy. It was replaced by the Ollanta which was built in Hull, England in 1931, dismantled for transportation and then reassembled at the lake.

Image via Wikipedia

Titicaca is the largest lake in South America at 118 miles, or 190 kilometres long and it covers an area of 9065 square kilometres, or three thousand five hundred square miles. The maximum depth is 275 metres, or nine hundred and three feet.  Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela is much larger that Titicaca but it is not strictly speaking a lake, but just an almost land-locked bay of the Caribbean Sea.  

Image via Wikipedia

It is fed by melt water from glaciers and rainfall, and has five main river systems which drain into it; the largest by volume of water is the River Ramis. There are also another forty one streams running down into Titiaca.

Image via Wikipedia

The lake itself has forty one islands, some of which are inhabited.  It also has a group of around forty artificial islands made from floating reeds and inhabited by people known as the Uros. Their original purpose was a defensive one so that if the people were threatened, they could easily move their island elsewhere.

Image via Wikipedia

The name of the lake, Titicaca, translates as ‘Rock Puma’ and is thought to refer to its shapes. From the air it looks just like a puma chasing a small animal which some say is a rabbit.