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Jackman Travels
Wow. What difference a border and a few hours on a bus make. Copacabana, Bolivia, is a beautiful haven at the south of Lake Titicaca and here you can really appreciate it. It's a charming little town, a real, vibrant, local community interacting with very few tourists. And as we lay in our hammocks, looking out over town and across the bay, we could be anywhere- it's got a real meditteranean feel to it. And the weather is awesome.
The must-do thing here is a trip to Isla del Sol but that involves another long boat ride and according to fellow travellers is 'a bigger Taquile' (see previous post) where locals stop you as you walk along paths, demanding cash to pass that point. So, no thanks, let's laze about, go on walks to high points on the shore and to Inka sites, then do some more lazing about in the scorchio sun.
We've been shopping each day in the local market, cooking our own food- there's a real satisfaction to retaking control of our eating after a month on the road. And it helps that it's cheaper than chips. Whatever you do, though, don't buy Bolivian spaghetti - it's terrible, managing to be rock hard in the middle and mushy on the outside. Amazing.
The locals here are charming and friendly and the kids playing in the street want us to join in! Here, as in much of Peru, loads of the houses are built using mud bricks. Some of them are plastered and painted to protect them but many stand bare, gradually getting washed away until a new layer is added. In the countryside, we passed many abandoned houses which were 50% disintegrated, their owners often having built a replacement next door.
So Copa is brilliant. In fact, the biggest problem with Copa is that we feel bad in recommending it publicly in case it is swamped by tourists in the future. All it would take is a couple of organised
tour groups putting it on their itineraries and it would be wrecked. Shame.
If you do come to Copa, though, eat at La Orilla, the best in town.
Hotel La Cupula is gorgeous- great grounds, nice room (four beds including one on a sort of mezzanine!) and friendly staff. In fact it's so good it's too full for us to stay there our final night but
we've moved next door to a fantasticaly kitch old place next door and continue to use Cupula's facilities. The new place, Utama, has homemade flags in the foyer, murals depicting Bolivian scenes in the room and, best of all, knitted patterned beenie hats for lampshades. It also turns out to have a great breakfast - v important for the Jackmen.
WEATHER NEWS:
Basically, every night about 3am or so it rains, there's light cloud when we wake up, and glorious sunshine from about 11am. Brill. But last night's storm was something else. Suzie heard the dogs of the town barking like crazy about 2am- something was coming our way. Then about 4am, we both were awoken by the most almighty thunder and simultaneous lightening right over our hotel. It was almost unbelievably loud, down the front at a rock gig kind of loud. Perhaps that's what happens when you're 4000 metres closer to the thunder than usual. And it continued, one clap bouncing off the mountains and ricocheting through our windows, making the whole building shake. Great fun.
TYPICAL BOLIVIAN BLOCKADE NEWS:
From Copa, we're going to La Paz. Unfortunately, some protesting ferry drivers are currently blocking the road so the bus company for whom we have tickets has shut its doors and stopped answering the phone. Another company can take us, though this involves going back to Peru, then returning to Bolivia, takes three buses and who-knows-how-much time. Also, because deliveries cannot get through, Copacabana currently has no milk (we'll live thanks) and no money in the bank (we have enough thankfully).
CHANGE OF PLAN NEWS:
We're off to New Zealand in four days! Basically, we've realised that (1) we want to go to NZ and do the north island (orig plan only South island and Wellington) and that (2) to do South America properly we'd need more time- there's loads more to do but it involves such long journeys that we just can't do it on this trip. (There are of course many other factors, not least the fact that there are only so many colonial churches one can take.) So from here we go to La Paz for two nights, the to Santiago, Chile for one night before flying to NZ.
The must-do thing here is a trip to Isla del Sol but that involves another long boat ride and according to fellow travellers is 'a bigger Taquile' (see previous post) where locals stop you as you walk along paths, demanding cash to pass that point. So, no thanks, let's laze about, go on walks to high points on the shore and to Inka sites, then do some more lazing about in the scorchio sun.
We've been shopping each day in the local market, cooking our own food- there's a real satisfaction to retaking control of our eating after a month on the road. And it helps that it's cheaper than chips. Whatever you do, though, don't buy Bolivian spaghetti - it's terrible, managing to be rock hard in the middle and mushy on the outside. Amazing.
The locals here are charming and friendly and the kids playing in the street want us to join in! Here, as in much of Peru, loads of the houses are built using mud bricks. Some of them are plastered and painted to protect them but many stand bare, gradually getting washed away until a new layer is added. In the countryside, we passed many abandoned houses which were 50% disintegrated, their owners often having built a replacement next door.
So Copa is brilliant. In fact, the biggest problem with Copa is that we feel bad in recommending it publicly in case it is swamped by tourists in the future. All it would take is a couple of organised
tour groups putting it on their itineraries and it would be wrecked. Shame.
If you do come to Copa, though, eat at La Orilla, the best in town.
Hotel La Cupula is gorgeous- great grounds, nice room (four beds including one on a sort of mezzanine!) and friendly staff. In fact it's so good it's too full for us to stay there our final night but
we've moved next door to a fantasticaly kitch old place next door and continue to use Cupula's facilities. The new place, Utama, has homemade flags in the foyer, murals depicting Bolivian scenes in the room and, best of all, knitted patterned beenie hats for lampshades. It also turns out to have a great breakfast - v important for the Jackmen.
WEATHER NEWS:
Basically, every night about 3am or so it rains, there's light cloud when we wake up, and glorious sunshine from about 11am. Brill. But last night's storm was something else. Suzie heard the dogs of the town barking like crazy about 2am- something was coming our way. Then about 4am, we both were awoken by the most almighty thunder and simultaneous lightening right over our hotel. It was almost unbelievably loud, down the front at a rock gig kind of loud. Perhaps that's what happens when you're 4000 metres closer to the thunder than usual. And it continued, one clap bouncing off the mountains and ricocheting through our windows, making the whole building shake. Great fun.
TYPICAL BOLIVIAN BLOCKADE NEWS:
From Copa, we're going to La Paz. Unfortunately, some protesting ferry drivers are currently blocking the road so the bus company for whom we have tickets has shut its doors and stopped answering the phone. Another company can take us, though this involves going back to Peru, then returning to Bolivia, takes three buses and who-knows-how-much time. Also, because deliveries cannot get through, Copacabana currently has no milk (we'll live thanks) and no money in the bank (we have enough thankfully).
CHANGE OF PLAN NEWS:
We're off to New Zealand in four days! Basically, we've realised that (1) we want to go to NZ and do the north island (orig plan only South island and Wellington) and that (2) to do South America properly we'd need more time- there's loads more to do but it involves such long journeys that we just can't do it on this trip. (There are of course many other factors, not least the fact that there are only so many colonial churches one can take.) So from here we go to La Paz for two nights, the to Santiago, Chile for one night before flying to NZ.
- comments
Emerson Fantastic curry with you guys on your brief trip back to the UK hope u have a good Christmas and I look forward to the rest of yor travel blogs. Love Emerson Hannah and Reuben