Lake Tota

Lake Tota
Lake Tota
	Cuítiva, Iza, Tota

Lake Tota (

Orinoco River

basin.

The major town on the lake is

Cuítiva

.

Lake Tota was an important religious center for the

Muisca and according to linguist Mariana Escribano its main name refers to "Astronomic Observatory", relating to its sacred uses for that culture

. There are legends which relate to the way the lake was formed by the hands of ancient ancestors.

The area around Lake Tota is one of the major onion producing regions of Colombia. The western shore of the lake is a popular tourist destination for Colombians.

The average water temperature of 13 °C allowed for the introduction of rainbow trout (Onchorynchus mykiss) which created a valuable wild fishery (a mounted specimen in Restaurante Lucho, Aquitania, reportedly early in the 1990s, weighed 7 kg) and cage culture aquaculture, but predation on native fish species as led to the probable extinction of the pez graso or grease fish (Rhizosomichthys totae) believed native to only this lake.

Lake Tota is a breeding ground for several threatened or endangered bird species, including the

Bogotá rail (Rallus semiplumbeus) and Apolinar's wren (Cistothorus apolinari). The last confirmed sighting of the Colombian grebe (Podiceps andinus), now considered to be extinct, was at Lake Tota.^[1]