Copacabana and Isla de Sol, Bolivia

Copacabana and Isla del Sol slideshow

It was good that there was an empty seat on the bus from La Paz to Copacabana, right on the first row. I like traveling up front, and besides, Sigrid, a woman in her thirties, from Austria, who had the window seat, seemed as eager to hook up with a travel companion as I was. After spending four days by myself in Coroico and going back to La Paz to find out that Antonio, my host, was gone traveling, I was ready for company.

In Copacabana, Sigrid and I shared a hotel room by Lake Titicaca's beach, where the joint was inappropriately named Hotel Brisas de Titicaca. Given the strong winds and cold we experienced at night, the name did not evoke the soft ocean breeze one would expect from it. And the place was not nearly as glamorous as the name indicates, but we still had fun during the cold nights, watching pirated videos on my computer. These videos are sold all over South America for less than a dollar, and although I am a little ashamed to buy them, I must say they come quite handy in a distant dusty town with no movie theater and not much else to do in the evening.

The trip from La Paz to Copacabana was very nice and eventful as the bus, along with ourselves, had to cross the lake on ferries. Our boat's motor failed mid trip and we had to change to another one. But the views were astonishingly beautiful from the boat. Once back on firm land,views of Lake Titicaca continued to follow us for a good hour. At an elevation of 11,460 feet, 177 miles long and 75 miles wide, the lake is one of the highest navigable lakes in the world and it extends over to Peru.

After a failed attempt to have breakfast in the morning,we went to the the lake's shore to catch a ferry to the north part of Isla del Sol. Strangely enough, most Cafes were closed at 8am, when ferries expect passengers to be at the dock by 8:15am. The only Cafe opened was attended by a woman who looked and acted in her 80s and beyond. She kept forgetting our orders and getting them mixed up. After a fifteen minute wait, we figured we would never get our orange juice in time to catch the ferry.

It took the ferry two hours to get to the north side of Isla del Sol and I thought we would freeze on the upper deck of the boat as little flocks of snow hit us. But soon enough we arrived, and after a moderately strenuous four hours walk, we descended Escalera de Inca (Inca Stairway) to catch our ferry back to Copacabana from the the south part of the island.

The Island of the Sun is the birthplace of the sun in Inca mythology and today, it has a population of about 5,000 people, distributed among several villages. Although the ruins were rather disappointing, the views of the lake from the mountain ridge were phenomenal. The high altitude made the walk a little harder than it should have been, and in the afternoon we were blessed with soft sun rays that later proved more fierce than we felt. When we looked at the mirror at the end of the day, I had a sun tan and Sigrid looked like a skunk with white marks around her eyes where the sun glasses covered.

After a meal of charcoal grilled trout from the lake and vegetables, we were ready for another movie and deep sleep. The next day I left for Arequipa, Peru, and Sigrid was going to take the day to relax before her four days journey back to Vienna.