Things to do
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Catedral de Puno
A granite cathedral finished in 1757, its facade carved by Andean masons with vines, mermaids and pumas alongside the saints. The interior is plain by contrast, and the square in front of it is where the Candelaria processions form. It stands a short walk up from the port, and the doors open around the morning services.
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Inca Tunuhuiri
A hilltop site above the lake between Chucuito and Ichu, with an oval enclosure and terracing that predates the Inca occupation of this shore. It is unfenced and rarely visited, and the reason to walk up is the run of the bay towards Puno.
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Lake Titicaca
Two and a half hours of open water lie between the reed islands off Puno and Taquile, a terraced island with Bolivia in view across the lake. Leave by eight and give the crossing the whole day.
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GHL Hotel Lago Titicaca
The only hotel on Esteves island, joined to Puno by a causeway, built low along the shore with gardens running down to the water. Rooms face the bay rather than the town, and the Yavari is moored a short walk from the gate.
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Inca Uyo
A walled enclosure beside the plaza filled with rows of carved stone phalli, read as an Inca fertility temple though the arrangement may be a colonial reconstruction. It sits behind the church of Santo Domingo and takes twenty minutes to see properly.
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Islas flotantes de los Uros
Around eighty floating platforms of layered totora reed anchored in the bay a few kilometres out, rebuilt continually as the base rots away from below. The nearest are heavily visited, and the outer islands, which take longer to reach, keep more of an ordinary working day.
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Lago Umayo
The lake Sillustani stands over, closed rather than draining into Titicaca, with a flat topped island in the middle grazed by vicuña. Most visitors see it only from the burial towers, though the road round the north shore passes through farming hamlets.
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Mirador Kuntur Wasi
A condor statue on the hill above Puno, reached by a long stair from the centre or a short taxi ride round the back. The whole bay lays out from the platform, and the climb is a fair test of how well the altitude has been taken.
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Monasterio Benedictino de la Resurrección
A Benedictine house on the lake shore at 3,870 metres, which makes it the highest Catholic monastery in the world, founded by the Belgian monk Simón Pedro Arnold. The church is built in the local idiom with a single nave, and the guesthouse takes visitors on retreat.
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Museo Carlos Dreyer
A collection left to the city by a German painter who settled in Puno, holding Tiwanaku and Inca pieces, colonial canvases and a room of gold worked at Sillustani. It is small, an hour is enough, and it stands a block from the main square.
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Sillustani
A peninsula of Colla and Inca burial towers above Lake Umayo, the tallest standing twelve metres and built of stone cut to fit without mortar. Several were left unfinished, which is what makes the ramps and the joint work legible at close range.
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Titilaka
A low modern lodge on a private peninsula near Platería, about an hour south of Puno, with every room facing water on two sides. It runs on a full board basis and its boats leave from a private jetty, which avoids the town port entirely.
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Yavari
An iron gunboat built in Birmingham in 1862, carried over the Andes in more than two thousand mule loads and reassembled on the lake. Restored as a museum ship and moored below the Esteves causeway, it still holds the Bolinder hot bulb engine fitted in 1914.
