Living over Water - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 273

FIGURE 14.38 ( Continued ) Just as was the situation in the pre-drainage Iraqi marshlands,
reed island dwellers in Lake Titicaca can be observed fixing their fishing nets, drying their
catch of fishes, and bundling reeds together for construction purposes.
endearing children reveling in their semi-aquatic existence (Figure 14.39) and can
hire a shallow boat and be poled about deep within the atmospheric Titicaca marshes
(Figure 14.40). Today, with travel to Iraq being too dangerous for foreigners, a visit to
these outer floating islands in Lake Titicaca is the closest one can experience to the
culture of the former and hopefully future fabled Mesopotamian marshlands.
However, the situation in the main group of islands most proximal to Puno
(Figure 14.41) is instructive in being a warning about what hopefully might be