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Titicaca Lake - largest freshwater lake in South America and highest of the world's large lakes

Baku, September 7, AZERTAC

Lake Titicaca is the world’s highest lake navigable to large vessels, lying at 3,810 meters above sea level in the Andes Mountains of South America, astride the border between Peru to the west and Bolivia to the east.
Titicaca is one of less than twenty ancient lakes on earth, and is thought to be there million years old.
It covers 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) and extends in a northwest-to-southeast direction for a distance of 120 miles (190 km).
It is 50 miles (80 km) across at its widest point. A narrow strait, Tiquina, separates the lake into two bodies of water. The smaller, in the southeast, is called Lake Huinaymarca in Bolivia and lake Pequeño in Peru.
The meaning of the name Titicaca is uncertain, but it has been variously translated as Rock of the Puma or Crag of Lead.
Titicaca's waters are limpid and only slightly brackish, with salinity ranging from 5.2 to 5.5 parts per 1 000. Surface temperatures average 56°F (14°C); from a thermo cline at 66 feet (20 m) temperatures drop to 52°F(11°C) at the bottom. Analyses show measurable quantities of sodium chloride, sodium sulphate, calcium sulphate, and magnesium sulphate in the water.
More than 25 rivers empty their waters into Titicaca; the largest, the Ramis, draining about two-fifths of the entire Titicaca Basin, enters the northwestern corner of the lake.
One small river, the Desaguadero, drains the lake at its southern end. This single outlet empties only 5 percent of the lake’s excess water; the rest is lost by evaporation under the fierce sun and strong winds of the dry Altiplano.
The lake averages between 460 and 600 feet (140 and 180 metres) in depth, but the bottom tilts sharply toward the Bolivian shore, reaching its greatest recorded depth of 920 feet (280 metres) off Isla Soto in the lake’s northeast corner.

Culture 2022-09-07 14:10:00