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The journey from La Paz to Copacabana (no, not the famous beach in Brazil) was uneventful, and I reached Copacabana to find a small town (smaller than I was expecting, which was good) laid out on the shores of beautiful Lake Titicaca, a welcome relief after the madness of La Paz.
At 3800m above sea level, Lake Titicaca is one of the highest navigable lakes in the world. It is huge, the remnants of an ancient sea, and now a popular stop off from travellers bound for Peru, as the Lake staddles the border between the two countries. As the tourist season is just getting underway in this part of the world, I baggged a discounted room in a hotel overlooking the lake. I think I might have been the only person staying there!
Copacabana itself is a charming little town, there's one main street where most of the accommodation and groovy little restaurants / cafe's can be found, plus the ubiquitous toursit shops selling those silly alpaca woolen hats and the like that appear to be popular amongst student gap year travellers. The locals don't wear them, so why should I?
In the afternoon I hiked up Cerro Carvario which overlooks the town and is something of a religious pilgrimage site. En route I met Adam from Blackpool, who had just arrived here straight from London / La Paz and I was the first person he had spoken to. So we watched the sunset over Lake Titicaca and I offered him some insight into the whole South America thing. We hooked up for dinner too, along with a couple of lads from Lancashire who we bumped into and I had met previously in Salta / La Paz (you're either heading North or South, so you have a tendancy to bump into people in and around).
The following day I had hoped to hire a bike and explore the surrounding area but alas no bike was to be found. Instead I watched the Six Nations England / Scotland game with the Lancs lads then spent the remainder of the day doing whatever and plannig the next day's trip to Isla Del Sol, about two hours away by boat.
Isla Del Sol is highly significant in Incan mythology as it's the supposed birthplace of the sun. The journey over was a little hairy as the boat was clearly crammed well past it's intended capacity but we made it in the end. I climbed the Incan Stairs to find a small village and duly checked into a small hostel for the night, followed by a half hour walk to the Incan ruins at Pilko Kaina, with a couple of Italians I had met. I hooked up with the Italians again later and enjoyed a nice trout dinner, fresh from the lake. Later that night we were treated to a large thunderstorm, a taster of thing to come!
Again my intentions for the next day were thwarted, again by the weather. I wanted to hike to the north of the island to see the larger Incan ruins but the weather wasn't having it, so I took the early ferry back to Copacabana. No sweat though, I'm going to have Inca to the eyeballs once I get to Peru and I quite like Copacabana as a place to hang out, so another day there was cool by me. I bumped into Adam again when I got back and we arranged to have some food in the evening and watch the Liverpool game. After said dinner I returned to the hotel to find a full blown fiesta going on next to the lake, apparently it was an important day in the local calender, some kind of anniversary. How the hell I slept through it I have no idea!
So the Bolivian leg of my journey is over already, dampened by the weather and lack of opportunity for the outward bound trips I had been mulling. To be honest I'm not bothered in the slightest, I'm off to Peru! I didn't care too much for the Bolivian's generally disinterested Bolivian's either, not a patch on the Argentines!
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