The Floating Islands of the Uros

Utama is one of about 50 in a community of floating islands that are home to several hundred descendants of the Uros, a pre-Incan people who have lived on such islands for hundreds of years.

Typically, multiple families, often related to each other, live on a single island and share in its upkeep. Another family shares half of Utama with the Coilas. The largest islands support as many as 10 families.

The islands are loosely tethered in place by a long rope anchored to the lake bed, though in 2010, the anchors were strengthened after an unusual gale tore more than 40 of the islands from their locations and blew them several miles away.

Nelson Coila (left) adds a fresh layer of totora reeds to Utama, the floating island he and his family (above) inhabit on Lake Titicaca.

For the Coila family—Nelson, Dora, and Emerson—and the Uros people living on Lake Titicaca, the totora reed is important to sustaining life. But like gospel principles, it must be applied regularly.

Photographs by Adam C. Olson

Notes

 

1.

See Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed. (2003), "diligence"; see also "persevere."

 

2.

See Alma 32:41–43.

 

3.

See Enos 1:12.

 

4.

See 4:6.

 

5.

See Alma 12:9–11.

 

6.

See Alma 17:2.

 

7.

See Moroni 9:6.

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