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Despite our condition and an unusual lake crossing in which our bus had to get floated across on a barge whilst we got in a boat, we arrived at our next destination: Copacabana - our final Bolivian town. Copa (which is nothing like it's Brazilian homonym) is on the shores of Lake Titikaka - the world's highest lake (3,800m ASL), and at 8,372 km2, the biggest lake above 2,000m! We took a tour out to Isla del Sol (an island in the lake) where there are no cars & the locals are still living pretty simply. We battled our hangovers & the altitude to climb to the peak of the island which put us above 4km ASL... a weird feeling when you're on an island!
The next day we crossed the border into Peru, stopping off in the lakeside town of Puno to visit the Isla Floatantes (floating islands). Basically centuries ago a tribe decided that the best way to protect themselves from invasions by neighbouring tribes was build a village of islands out of reeds out in the lake! And they are still living out there today!
They put layers & layers off reeds on top of each other like hay stacks until it is like a metre or so thick & strong enough to support the weight of whatever is going to be on that island. Despite now being really touristy/gimmicky, it was pretty impressive seeing 1000's of people living like that on a lake!
Puno also had the distinguished honour of hosting our first guinea pig tasting! Unusually, the dish we ordered was basically cheese cubes, wrapped in bacon then wrapped in guinea pig! Neither of us were that impressed causr there seemed to be a bit of a bitter aftertaste, but we're not sure if that was the sauce or the skin, so we may yet give it another shot...
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