Taking things slow in Copacabana

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Copacabana is a town on the shores of the huge Lake Titicaca. The lake is at 3,812 m (12,507 ft) above sea level making it the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. It was to be our last stop in Bolivia before heading over the border to Peru. We had a small problem when we arrived there. The locals were standing in the road leading into the town and blocking it so buses couldn´t get through. They made everyone get off the bus and use their taxi´s to get to the centre. Cheeky gits.

Copacabana is pretty enough although very set up for tourists, it has numerous bars and cafes. It also seems to be a magnet for hippies and new age travellers and they lined the streets making and selling jewelery. The town has a huge, amazing Cathedral but its main attraction is of course the lake itself and it is the base for boat trips over to Isla del Sol, which is the birthplace of the sun is Inca mythology.

We ended up staying in one of the best places in town. It was a beautiful boutique hotel built on the top of a hill with amazing views over the lake. The lake is very vast and it looked more like the ocean, it was hard to imagine that we were so high up. That night we sampled some Lake Titicaca trout and had a few drinks.

The next day we got the early boat over to Isla del Sol. It was a nice hour and a half ride with lovely views of the lake. We decided to spend a night on Isla del Sol so we didn´t have to rush. We also decided to go to the south end of the island as it is much quieter and less touristy. Once we arrived we had to climb hundreds of Inca steps before finally arriving arriving in the village where we would be spending the night. The island has a few villages and most people work on the land therefore the landscape is mainly rural farmland although there are also some Inca ruins to be seen. It´s a very basic place and it didn´t feel particularly touristy despite the amount of visitors it receives. It has maintained its traditions and its charms.

Once we´d booked into our hostel we went on a short walk around the south end of the island. It's quite small and we trekked to one of its highest points from which we could see the whole island. The views were stunning. In some directions it was just the lake which was so tranquil and seemed endless and in others we could see snow capped mountains on the Bolivian mainland. That night we walked back up to the highest point of the island to watch the sunset and then went for dinner in one the restaurants. We were the only people in the place and we waited over an hour for a bowl of pasta. Things don't happen quickly here.

The next morning we got the boat back across the lake to Copacabana and spent another day and night there before getting the bus over the border to Puno in Peru.

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