Dance and wild Costumes

As numerous as the dances themselves are the lavish and colorful outfits the dancers wear. They range from multi-hued polleras (layered skirts) donned by barefoot female dancers to the short skirts, fringed shawls and bowler hats used in the highland version of the marinera dance. For centuries the Indians in the altiplano were accustomed to working hard, then celebrating their special days with gusto. In fact, many of the dances incorporate features of the most repressive times for the Indians with dancers dressed as mine overseers or cruel landowners characters that are mocked during the festivities. It is difficult to find a month in Puno without at least one elaborate festival, which is always accompanied by music and dance.

Within Puno, there remain a handful of buildings worth seeing. The cathedral is a magnificent stone structure dating back to 1757 with a weather-beaten baroque-style exterior and a surprisingly spartan interior- except for its center altar of carved marble, which is plated in silver.

Over a side-altar to the right side of the church is the icon of The Lord of Agony, commonly known as El Señor de la Bala. Beside the cathedral is the famous Balcony of the Count of Lernos found on an old house on the comers of Deustua and Conde de Lemos streets. It is said that Peru's Viceroy Don Pedro Antonio Fernandez de Castro Andrade y Portugal - the count -stayed here when he first arrived in the city he later named "San Carlos de Puno."

On the Plaza de Armas is the library and the municipal pinacoteca, or art gallery and half a block off the plaza is the Museo Carlos Dreyer, a collection of Nazca, Tiahuanaco, Paracas, Chimú and Inca artifacts bequeathed to the city upon the death of their owner, for whom the museum is named.

One of the museum’s most valuable pieces is an Aymará arybalo, the delicate pointed-bottomed pottery whose wide belly curves up to a narrow neck. Throughout the South American continent, the arybalo stands as a symbol 0 the Andean culture.