Visiting the Sillustani Chullpas near Puno
While Puno is not known for housing many attractions besides Lake Titicaca, there are a few options for travelers who would like to explore the area. If you’ve seen the gold and silver relics in some of the city’s museums, the next step would be to visit their source, where remains continue to be discovered to the present day….
As you walk up to Sillustani, located 45min outside of Puno on a cold hilltop overlooking Lake Umayo, you take a trip back in time. The site served as a sacred burial ground for spiritual and political elite for both the K’olla 
and for the Inca after them. Its intriguing chullpas are hollow stone towers within which mummies were placed in the fetal position to await rebirth, with their most useful and valuable possessions alongside them.
Many of the towers of this ancient cemetery, some of which rise to almost 40ft, are in poor shape due to the repeated assaults 
of dynamiting grave robbers. While some of the towers are square, most are rounded and become progressively thinner as the height increases, somewhat like inverted cones. The stones have been cut and fit together with many odd interlocking angles. Among them, one can observe different pre-Columbian burials and mausoleums.
One of the main attractions is known as the Chullpa del Lagarto, the Lizard Burial Tower. It was constructed later than others, during 
the Incan epoch, with rectangular stones precisely fitted together. (The Incas appropriated the site after conquering the K’olla, and were renowned stoneworkers.) In the 19th century, it was partly destroyed by tomb raiders in search of the site’s treasures.
Further one from this tower, you reach the part of Sillustani which overlooks the lake and, while gazing over the impressive mirror of water with its small island and blanket of white clouds, can perhaps understand why this site was so sacred in ancient times.