Lake Titicaca, Peru · Travel Poster

Not just a view, the heritage behind it. Ella writes about the place, its hidden history, and the details that never make it into the guidebooks, all printed on the poster.

Around 500 years ago, as the Inca empire expanded and began swallowing up smaller communities, the Uros people responded by building somewhere the empire couldn't easily follow. They wove entire islands out of totora reeds and anchored them out on Lake Titicaca, floating platforms sturdy enough to live on, complete with reed houses, reed boats and even a reed church and school. The reeds slowly rot from below, so the islands need constant rebuilding from the top, a maintenance routine that has never really stopped in five centuries. The Uros still live there today, on islands their ancestors built purely to disappear.

An original illustration, available in colour or black and white, created for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included.

Please note that, to protect the original artwork from copyright infringement, the images shown on this website are low resolution. The poster you receive is printed in high resolution, with all the detail and clarity of the original.