Fodor's Expert Review El Yavari

The restored Victorian iron ship was built in Birmingham, England, in 1861. It was subcontracted by the Peruvian Navy to patrol the waters of Titicaca, so it was dismantled and its 2,766 pieces and two crankshafts were loaded onto a freighter and shipped to the Pacific coast port of Arica, which was then in Peru but which today belongs to Chile. Mules and porters carried the pieces 467 km (290 miles) through the Andes Mountains to Puno. The journey took six years, and it was Christmas Day 1870 before it was reassembled and launched on Lake Titicaca. Now a museum, it's docked at the end of a pier by the Sonesta Posada del Inca Hotel. After remaining idle for 40 years, the vessel took a trial run in 1999 after volunteers rebuilt its engine.