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An immense region both in terms of its history and the breadth of its magical landscape, the Titicaca Basin makes most people feel like they are on top of the world. The skies are vast and the horizons appear to bend away below you. The high altitude ensures that recent arrivals from the coast take it easy for a day or two, though those coming from Cusco will already have acclimatized. The scattered population of the region are descended from two very ancient Andean ethnic groups or tribes - the Aymara and the Quechua. The Aymara's Tiahuanaco culture predates the Quechua's Inca civilization by over three hundred years. The first Spanish settlement at Puno sprang up around a silver mine discovered by the infamous Salcedo brothers in 1657, a camp that forged such a wild and violent reputation that the Lima viceroy moved in with soldiers to crush and finally execute the Salcedos before things got too out of hand. At the same time - in 1668 - he created Puno as the capital of the region and from then on it developed as the main port of Lake Titicaca and an important town on the silver trail from Potosi. The arrival of the railway, late in the nineteenth century, brought another boost, but today it's a relatively poor, rather grubby sort of town, even by Peruvian standards, and a place that has suffered badly from recent drought and an inability to manage its water resources. On the edge of the town spreads the vast Lake Titicaca - enclosed by white peaks and dotted with unusual floating islands , basically huge rafts built out of reeds and home to a dwindling and much-abused Indian population. More spectacular by far are two of the populated fixed islands, Amantani and Taquile , whose ongoing traditional life gives visitors a genuine taste of pre-Conquest Andean Peru. Densely populated since well before the arrival of the Incas, the lakeside Titicaca region is also home to the curious and ancient tower tombs known locally as chullpas , which are rings of tall, cylindrical stone burial chambers, often standing in battlement-like formations.
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