Lake Titicaca is the world's highest navigable lake and the center of a region where thousands of subsistence farmers eke out a living fishing in its icy waters, growing potatoes in the rocky land at its edge or herding llama and alpaca at altitudes that leave Europeans and North Americans gasping for air. It is also where traces of the rich Indian past still stubbornly cling, resisting in past centuries the Spanish conquistadors' aggressive campaign to erase Inca and preInca cultures and, in recent times, the lure of modernization.
When Peruvians talk of turquoise blue Titacaca, they proudly note that it is so large it has waves. This, the most sacred body of water in the Inca empire and now the natural separation between Peru and Bolivia, has a surface area exceeding 8,000 square kilometers (3,100 square miles), not counting its more than 30 islands.

The most famous islands are:

Uros, located in the Bay of Puno
Taquile, located 35 kilometers from the City of Puno
Amantani, it is 38 kilometers from the city of Puno
Suasi which is located 70 kilometers from the city of Puno.

The climate in the surrounding areas of the lake is not extremely cold as one would expect about 3800 meters. The area surrounding the lake is the most important geo-economic region south Peruvian Andes, only in this area are the 49% alpaca, 32% of sheep, 29% of flames and 10% of all cattle Peru.

The population has also grown greatly in this area, only in the Peruvian living around the lake more than a million people. Due to the climate and agriculture subsisting by the moderate climate that produces the Lake Titicaca. If the Lake Titicaca not exists, this area had been a frozen wasteland without inhabitants.