On Lake Titicaca in Peru, villagers want to draw tourists — but on their own terms
PUNO, Peru - In the beginning, there was a lake cradled in the mountains of a high plateau in the Andes. How it got here was simple: The universe cried, and its tears flooded the world. Mankind had disobeyed the gods, and the gods sent in pumas. Lake Titicaca - literally, pumas of stone - is proof, tragedy burnished into beauty.
Standing on a quay in Puno, a city on the lake's western shore, my wife, Margie, and I stared at its cerulean expanse, an autumn sun reflecting off what has been called the eye of God. Not a breath of wind stirred the water, the Donald Duck and Goofy paddle boats imperturbable.
Our Peruvian itinerary had included Machu Picchu, but this morning vista surpassed the splendor of those ruins, whose images on calendars and coasters, snow globes and refrigerator magnets are burned so deeply in the mind that the reality seemed almost derivative.
There was no mistaking the originality of Lake Titicaca, straddling Peru and Bolivia.
It seemed less terrestrial than
