Photo taken at Uyuni – Salar de Uyuni – Bolivia
Back to white. Arriving in Salar de Uyuni, the biggest salar in the world with its 11.000 km2 l, but also the biggest lithium deposit in the planet
Photo taken at Isla Flotante Uros Kontiki
I’m now continuing to Bolivia. It was such an experience to spend some days (and nights) on the floating islands.
They truly are a marvel of simple, ancestral engineering. Uros weave totora roots together to form a sturdy 2 meters thick base layer and then cover the whole thing with more of the plant. To hold them in place, the islands are anchored to the lake bed using long pointy sticks and long ropes.
A well kept island can last up to 30 years, sometimes 40. However the strong presence of tourist means more maintenance work
Photo taken at Islas Flotantes De Los Uros
Today, about 2000 Uros (or Uru) live on an archipelago of 120 artificial islands, clustering in the West corner of the lake Titicaca near Puno.
In the last fifteen years the islands have become a popular tourist attraction, allowing Felix here and his people to supplement their hunting and fishing activities by welcoming visitors to the islands, selling handicrafts and sharing their way of life.
So far this has proven to be a good thing, allowing their culture to survive with a small outside contamination
Photo taken at Islas Flotantes De Los Uros
The Uros people spend all their life floating on the water of lake Titicaca.
Everything from the island floor, to the houses walls and boats is made using totora, a giant bulrush sedge that grows on the lake.
The habitats of these islands depend for subsistence mainly on the small fish and duck eggs they catch around the lake
Photo taken at Islas Flotantes De Los Uros
On my way to Bolivia I decided to stop few days on lake Titicaca to visit the floating Uros islands
Photo taken at Huaraz
It was amazing visiting Cordillera Blanca. Is incredible how normal is here to leave at more than 3000m above sea level.
I will definitely come back one day, carrying less weight so I can reach the top of this incredible mountains. Hopefully they will still be white. Now I’m heading to the South
Photo taken at Huaraz
All the farmers I met on the Cordillera lamenta a decrease in the water coming down the mountains. It’s not only about the glacier retreat but also about rain getting less frequent than it used to be
Photo taken at Pastoruri mountain, Huaraz-Ancash
The Pastoruri glacier is even more popular than Laguna 69, since it is reachable by foot in 30 minutes.
This made it a really crowded spot in the 80’s, when people where coming here to ski.
Today there is not much left. All the brown rock you see in the picture used to be covered by ice 15 years ago. Needless to say the lake wasn’t there
Photo taken at Laguna 69- Huaraz
After a really challenging hike I got to Laguna 69 at 4604m. This is probably the most popular lake of the more than 400 that can be found in the Huascarán National Park. In the thaw season, the lake is nourished by a waterfall from the Chacraraju glacier, so it’s a good place to observe how the landscape is changing
Photo taken at Parque Nacional de Huascarán
Huascarán, situated in the Cordillera Blanca range of the western Andes, is the highest point in Peru (6768m).
As all of the other 660 formations in the area, its glacier is retreating and could disappear in the next 40 years delivering water shortages and catastrophic floods in the nearby towns