Copacabana (Largo Titicaca and Isla de Sol)...for those who speak english Lake Titicaca and The Island of the Sun
So we left La Paz and headed to Copacabana. We got a posh tourist bus that picked us up from our hotel at 7 in the morning then drove around La Paz, picking up other tourists until it did it's final pick up at the bus station 5 mins from our hotel at 8:30. The journey was about 3 hours, although we had to get off at one point while the bus was loaded onto a barge and we all paid 1.50 to get a boat across the narrow bit of the lake. We were both impressed that our bus made it across on the few planks of wood that served as a barge. They even squeezed a taxi onto the end as well.
We took a few pics on the other side and got back on the bus.
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| That's our bus... |
When we got to Copa we just headed down towards the beach, hoping to find some decent accomodation. It almost felt like a 'proper holiday' resort. It was sunny, people were lounging around on chairs, drinking beer, wearing shorts and there was a beach. OK, a 'beach'. But it was sandy (dusty) and was next to a big bit of water. It is one of those lakes that is so big you can't see the other side, so it feels like a sea. There were loads of boats by the shore, including rowing boats for hire and pedalos in the shape of swans etc.
We wandered up the shore for a bit and found a large hotel. The bloke took us up the first flight of stairs to show us a room but we didn't like it so he took us up the next three flights to get the room at the very top of the place – amazing view, bloody knackered (still at around 3,600 m) – nice room, even had a whirlpool bath!
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| View from our room |
At this point seeing the town, lake, sun and hotel along with the bath made me feel like I was on a proper holiday rather then backpacking so this is why I am placing pics of the view and room!
We chilled for a while and then headed into the town, it is small but had everything you need and is a bit too tourist ready with tourist prices but hey were on holiday! We had some drinks, lunch and then checked out what we could see. We headed to the cathedral which was pretty, with whitewashed walls and had a “moorish feel”. We were looking for the famous black statue of the virgin and 24 hours later we found it. We also went into a small room which is painted black with candle wax everywhere, even on the walls, where people mould or draw what they want i.e. car, money, house etc and pray for it. The women outside the catherdral also sell minature (toys) houses , cars and fake money so Christians can buy and place at the catherdal and pray for them to get what it is they want. Me and Neil decided to ask for nothing.
Now as Neil explained earlier the lake has swan shaped pedalos and as I had never been on one we decided to try it out. It was cheap to do and judging by the way thr pedalo came apart as me and Neil got in it was worth every penny. See photos and video for the full effect all the words in the world cannot describe the experience!
After we headed back had a drink and watched the sunset. That evening we were so tired that we fell asleep.
We were up early the next day as we had booked to go to the Isla de la Sol (Island of the Sun) which is the birthplace of the Sun God which is important to the Incas. It is said to have Inca ruins and we thought “this should be good” as we hadn't really seen any Inca stuff yet. We were also planning to stay the night on the island to help their economy and be good moral travellers.
I was impressed with my Spanish as I explained to the hotel people that we would be away for one night but returning the day after and could they look after our bags and we'd pay some money now and some later and could we have our old room etc. Only later did I work out that I had been speaking quite a hefty amount of Spanish gibberish, 'Our reverse is tomorrow after', for example, and , 'May we leave our balls here'. Part of having a phrase book makes things worse as I always realise later that I wasn't making any sense.
Anyway, we got on the boat around 8:15 and settled near the front, inside. Most of the other tourists had sat on the benches on the roof, but we headed for the comfy seats. There were a couple of small children running around, who proceeded to amuse themselves by playing hide and seek around us and even singing a song for us at one point. We both fell asleep so I can't comment on how good it was. We arrived about an hour and a half later and struggled off the boat onto a rickety old jetty to be accosted by old men trying to sell us tickets for the ruins.
We finally paid and headed to the Inca Steps and Spring. I went to get the camera out and start snapping away when it told me that the interal memory was full, when I said this to Neil his face changed and he said “I think the memory card is still in the laptop back at the hotel” this meant we could only take 10 pics for the day...so I had to chose very carfeully.
We began out climb up to the top of the island for the spectacular view of the island and the lake, at a altitude of over 3800meters and scorching heat these large Inca steps were really hard (Neil said it was good practise for the Inca Trail in Peru) and though he may have been right I still hated him throughout the climb and wished to call him every name under the sun as I was soon reminded how unfit I was. After climbing to the top of the stairs, seeing the spring, we climbed some more and more steps to and through the main village trying to find somewhere to stay...this was tricky as everything seemed shut. We walked along the trails and up and up and must have walked for about 2 and and a half hours and seen half the island. The view was amazing and seeing the village life was great as there are only arund 2500 people living on the island..we saw about 50 of them and about 50 animals ranging from pigs, shep, donkey (as they are needed to carry water onto the island), dogs, llamas etc.
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| Inca steps |
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| Amazing view - we climbed that...from the far end! |
After I looked at the map and realised we had already walked half the length of the island, we were starting to wonder what we were going to do if we spent the night here. A quick discussion later it was decided that we would just head back and get the next ferry back. What we had seen so far of the whole 'ruin' situation, we weren't going to be very impressed if we kept walking. We headed back down through the village – it really reminded me of village life in Kenya, the makeshift houses, the local school, the animals and rubbish everywhere – and found a little food place by the ferries to have a sandwich and drink while we waited for the 4 o'clock ferry.
Around 3 we left the food place and got a ticket onto the next ferry, this time we thought we should sit on top and take in the views. As the journey is over a hour long I still managed to fall asleep on a very choppy lake. We arrived at some make shift floating islands and asked if we wanted to pay and see them, like most of the boat we decided against it and returned back to copa. Exhusted from the walking and early start we chilled and watched Pirates of the Carribean on TV and then headed out for dinner, where we had the famous speciality of the town, trout...or as they call it, trucha. It was nice though very expensive even though they catch it about 50metres from the restaurant.
I was amused by one small thing on the ferry back – we were sat opposite three Germans and B started to absent-mindedly sing, 'Springtime for Hitler', until I sublty nudged her and pointed out what she was doing. Trout was nice. Everybody had been trying to sell us trout since we had arrived. Women would come up to us and wave bits of trout enticingly under our noses from beachfront stalls. I should point out here that, like all Bolivian cities, Copacabana was full of stray dogs. All sorts of different breeds as well, from sausage dogs to Alsatians. This caused my wife no end of consternation and distress. There were also lots of tame dogs as well, the only way you could tell the difference was that the tame dogs wore clothes.
Next day we took it easy, got up early to have breakfast (take in the view), have a bath after 6 and a half weeks and then wander down into town for some shopping (window), drinking and then we decided to walk up to see anither Inca ruin, however when we got to the base of the steep climb and some kid asking us to pay (seemed very dodge) we, like the rest of the tourists ahead of us, decided it was not worth it and so headed to another Inca ruin which happened to be behind some wire fence, along a shoddy path by a load of rubbish. We read the info, took some pics (see below) and headed back to have some drinks.
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| A big stone behind a fence.... |
At the bar we asked for cocktails...me a Cuba Libre and Neil a Moscow Mule. When they arrived they had more lime in then anything else (see pic) and so we had to order a beer to help it go down. We had a sandwich and then went to find someone who could help us book a bus and cross over into Peru the next day. That night we decided to get some beers in and chill before the early start into Peru. I went to get the beers from the bloke in our hotel. This was easy enough, but asking if he had any crisps took at least 15 mins. They were quite used to my bad Spanish by now and he seemed amused rather than irritated but eventually he gave me a piece of paper and a pencil. I wrote down, 'crisps', then, 'pringles?' and 'Lays'. He smiled and said, 'Ah..crips!'. He then said something I didn't understand but the bottom line is I had to go out and walk into town to get a bag of crisps. We didn't even eat them.
Pics link
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=234118&id=547011402&l=21a178ae22
