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Published: January 16th 2010
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With our tickets in hand, we boarded our bus to Copacabana. A 7 hour ride to Puno, a one hour stopover and 4 hours, including a stop at the Peru-Bolivia border (no major issues, except that the bus got a flat and we needed to wait for them to change it). We arrived in Copacabana smelly (no shower since prior to the Inca trail) and tired. Having not booked a hostel we began searching and found the Colonial Hostel, which looked acceptable. We hauled our things up 3 flights of stairs and immediately got ready to have a shower. What we had failed to realize was that this hostel didn’t have hot water. We braved the shower anyways, but as it was glacially cold, there was a lot of whining by both Kara and me. Once that ordeal was dealt with, we decided to explore the town. Copacabana isn’t much to write home about. It’s a small touristy “beach” town on Lake Titicaca. As our first impression of Bolivia, it wasn’t the greatest. It was dusty and full of street vendors trying to sell all sorts of touristy trinkets, most of which we had already seen in Peru. We went down
to the water and had some lunch (“trucha” - trout from Lake Titicaca, something there definitely wasn’t a lack of in this area. We spent the day and night wandering, doing laundry and relaxing. The next day we decided to stay in Copacabana that night for New Year’s Eve. We later learned that the real party was on Isla del Sol that night, but that was unbeknownst to us. We decided to take a short walk up the hill in Copa to the Cathedral. Arriving right when the church was reopening after the afternoon siesta (2:30) we were amused to find that this was the time for the car-blessing ceremony. It was really interesting to watch these monks come out to the street next to the church to bless these highly-decorated cars. Then, what looked like shaman women came around to burn incense and smudge the demons from the cars. Finally, in what I assumed was a last ditch attempt to scare off anything evil from their cars, they would light off firecrackers right in front of them. We also booked our ferry ride to Isla del Sol that night, for 8:30am on New Year’s day (depending on how the
night went, possibly a foolish decision). We went back to our room and got ready for the night. Heading out at 9pm we thought we would be out just as the party was starting. We headed to the only bar that we knew was doing a New Year’s party. No one was there. Ok, there was one creepy guy, who after our first beer, essentially chased us out of there with his creepiness. We walked down the strip of restaurants, trying to find someone in the New Year’s mood, but there were only people sitting and eating dinner. As midnight hit we were definitely disappointed in this town. At the stroke of midnight, however, the streets were flooded with people and fireworks started going off. Little did we know that New Year’s parties start at midnight in Bolivia, not before. Too bad we booked our ferry for so early the next day. We headed to bed pretty quickly, realizing that our Spanish was also not good enough to join in with the locals. We went to bed to the sounds of partying in the street.
The next morning we headed off on the slowest passenger ferry ever (1.5 hours to
the north of the island) and got to Isla del Sol. We decided to do the trek from the north to the south for 3.5 hours. It was a hot day, so we stopped for breakfast in the North before heading out. As we had learned on the Inca trail, Isla del Sol is said to be the birthplace of the Inca’s and there is a myth that the first two Incas were born out of the water on the shores of the island. Therefore, along the trail we came across some Inca ruins, but there were not nearly as well maintained as the ones that we saw on the way to Machu Picchu. The best part about the hike, however, was the scenery. Isla del Sol is absolutely beautiful. It’s on a lake, but because Titicaca is so huge, it could easily be on the ocean. The scenes were breathtaking in many places. And while it was hot, there was a nice breeze off the lake, so it was a pretty nice walk (again, “Inca flat”, hills and valleys, but the worst part was the heat). As we walked along the trail, entering various parts of the island, we
were approached multiple times to pay taxes for each area. The ferry boat operator had told us about this, but we thought it was ridiculous that we had to pay for the north part of the island, then the south part, then just to walk into the southern town of Yumani. We later met two girls who had just refused to pay each time and that is what I would therefore recommend to anyone going to the island. While, relatively, it’s not a lot of money, it does seem to be a grab to ask for it that many times.
That night we checked into our hostel, met up with a couple of Aussie girls who told us that the New Year’s party was on the island the night before (if only we knew!) and played cards and drank wine with them as we watched the sunset. The next morning we were back on the slowest ferry in the world, headed back to Copacabana where we were about to catch a bus to La Paz!
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