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Botanical boats
17/04/2020

Far away and more than 3,800 metres up in the Andes near Puno on Lake Titicaca, live a people known as the Uru whose culture is based on a reed called totora, the giant bulrush sedge Schoenoplectus californicus ssp. tatora. From this plant the Uru construct floating islands on which they live. I have been there and walked on one or two of them, a strange experience because your feet sink about 10cm with every step but you don’t get wet!
Boats, called balsas, which the Uru also make from totora as my photo shows, are of course essential for moving between the islands and for fishing, unsurprisingly an essential activity. The lake contains populations of the lake orestias Orestias cuvieri, which can grow to more than 25cm long and the much smaller carachi amarillo O. luteos, as well catfish and trout (introduced). There are a few cattle and some reed houses on some of the islands, too, constructed on an extra-thick totora layer; cooking is done in characteristic pots, placed on a slab of stone so the reeds don’t catch fire. I photographed one of the pots, as shown in the second picture. Although the totora stems are long when laid, they soon break up into short pieces with the constant passage of feet.
The Uru make the islands by creating a base of totora roots which they cover with layer upon layer of harvested totora stems, adding continually to the top as the lower ones decay. To stop them drifting about, the islands are anchored by ropes tied to poles. It is hard and constant work!
Lake Titicaca is rich in bird life as one would expect, and the avifauna is also hunted by the Uru. The lake is home to 108 species of endemic birds as well as twenty-six fish, nine amphibians, four reptiles, fifteen mammals and an unknown number of invertebrates.