I never dreamed Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, had waterspouts.
Lake Titicaca is located in the middle of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes Mountains at just over 12,500 ft. above sea-level. This morning I made my way from the small border town of Desaguadero to the larger highland city of Juliaca, where I am writing from right now.
As the bus was cruising along a portion of the highway that borders the lake, I noticed what looked to be a small funnel cloud beginning to form off in the distance over the lake.
I watched for quite a while to see if I could see any water being sprayed up on the lake, which would suggest that this was indeed a waterspout in its beginning stages. But I didn´t see anything at first.
Then just a few minutes later, I glanced over again at the lake and there it was. A fully formed waterspout churning over Lake Titicaca. The waterspout stayed alive for at least 10-15 minutes that I saw it, and was still going pretty strong as our bus took us over a ridge and out of sight of the lake.
I just read online where the locals say that they only see an average of about 5 waterspouts a year on the lake, so this was not an everyday occurance.
