Mysterious Burial Chambers

Some 35 km (21 miles) from Puno is Sillustani, with its circular burial towers or chullpas overlooking Lake Umayo. The age of the funeral towers, which are up to 12 meters (40 feet) high, remains a puzzle. A Spanish chronicle-keeper described them as "recently finished" in 1549, although some still appear as if they were never completed and the Indians that built them were conquered by the Incas about a century earlier.

The chullpas apparently were used as burial chambers for nobles of the Colla civilization; these were Indians who spoke Aymara, had architecture considered more complicated than that of the Incas and who buried their nobility with their entire family.

Not far away is Chucuito, a village that sits upon what was once an Inca settlement and which boasts an Inca sundial. Stop by the Santo Domingo Church with its small museum in this altiplano village; also worth visiting is La Asuncion Church.

Juli, once the capital of the lake area, has four beautiful colonial churches under reconstruction. Although it now appears a little odd to see so many large churches so close together, at the time the Spanish ordered them built they hoped to covert huge masses of Indians to Roman Catholicism.

In addition, the Spanish were accustomed to having one church for the Europeans, one for the mixed-raced Christians and yet another for the Indians. The largest of Juli's churches is San Juan Bautista with its colonial paintings tracing the life of its patron, Saint John the Baptist.

From the courtyard of La Asuncion Church visitors have a captivating view of the lake. The other churches in the city are San Pedro, once the city's principal place of worship and the church in which a choir of 400 Indians used to sing each Sunday, and Santa Cruz, which is just beside the city's old cemetery. Santa Cruz was originally a Jesuit church upon the front of which Indian stonemasons carved a huge sun - the Inca god - along with more traditional Christian symbols.

It is from Juli that the Transturin catamarans leave across the lake for Copacabana, Bolivia. (Information is available from the Transturin office in Puno, Av. Girón Tacna 201. Tel: 737).

Pilgrimage site:
Copacabana can also be reached by taking a minibus rid around the side of the lake, passing the reeds waving in the wind, shy but curi ous children at the bends in the road and always the brilliant blue of Titicaca or the roadway that ends the lake.

This pleasant trip involves a short ferry trip at the Strait of Tiquina and the destination is a pleasant one. Copacabana is a friendly little town accus tomed to tourists and has a number o modest but clean restaurants and hotels It is most famous for its cathedral containing a 16th-century carved wood figure of the Virgin of Copacabana, the Christian guardian of the lake.

The statue, finished in 1853, was the work of Indian sculptor Francisco Tito Yupanqui, nephew of Inca Huayna Capac. Except for during Mass, the statue stands with its back to the congregation - but facing the lake so it can keep an eye out for any approaching storms and earthquakes.

One of the loveliest outings in Copacabana is a dawn or dusk walk along the waterfront, watching the sky explode into color with sunrise or slip into the blue black of night at sunset.

It is also possible to reach Bolivia by crossing around the other side of the lake via Desaguadero, but this border town is one of the continent's filthiest and there is no acceptable lodging there in the event buses on the Bolivian side are not running (a common eventuality owing to holidays, strikes or sometimes lack of demand).

From Copacabana, launches can be hired to visit the Bolivian islands which are also on Lake Titicaca - the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon. The Island of the Sun (also accessible via a public ferry) has a sacred Inca rock at one end and the ruins of Pilko Caima with a portal dedicated to the sun god at the other. The Island of the Moon, which is also sometimes called Coati, has ruins of an Inca temple and a cloister for Chosen Women