Voice (m): By the lake in the sight of my God, Beautiful Mother Earth! In the early hour… Beautiful Mother Earth!

Narrator (f): Puno, located over 3,800 meters above sea level, south of Peru, in the plateau of Collao, features as its main attraction the legendary Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, which is cared for by its inhabitants, both on its islands and on the areas around it along its shores.

 
Rolando Colquehuanca – Director of Museum of Ethnology, Peru (m): May you have a good day, on this great day of yours. Thank you for visiting this town by Lake Titicaca, where we live near the totora reeds.

Rolando (m):I welcome you to this town of Puno, to this sacred lake of the Incas, at 3,800 meters above sea level. We, the lake inhabitants, live very proud of our glorious legacy, our parents, the sun, our mother the moon, and our ancestors, the Incas Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, who founded this empire. We’ve been proud. I invite you to know this majestic Lake Titicaca, with its alive culture, with our islands, with our Apus, with our highest summits, with our snowcapped mountains, with everything that is preserved here on the high plain.

Narrator (f): Their spirituality is based on a direct contact with nature, thanking the land for its products with the offering to Pachamama, Mother Earth; as well as the Apus, or mountains, which protect the people and their harvests; also the lake, the sun, the moon and the stars, in which the Paccos, beings endowed with the skill of sensing and predicting the future, forecast the weather to prevent, in many cases, floods, or in other cases to announce the abundant harvest.  These persons used natural elements for the same purpose.