Humantay Lake

This guide to Humantay Lake, above Cusco, starts with a gray, clouded patch near the shore that has no business sitting next to water this famously turquoise. It traces the glacial milk that gives the lake its color, the years travelers waded and swam in it for photographs, and the local belief that the peak and lake above are an apu, a living spirit owed offerings of coca leaves and flowers. You will hear what the community decided to do once that sacred water started turning gray. Stay on the marked shoreline and let the color do the work instead of your hands.