Copacabana - unfortunately, not the popular beach in Brazil!

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Copacabana is a nice enough place without being anything too special in our book. We decided to stay here for a couple of nights mainly because we felt being near the lake would be preferable to the hustle and bustle of yet another large capital city, and as La Paz was our next stop we thought we would try avoid it for at least a couple more days.

As our time in Copacabana was fairly uneventful, I think I am just going to run down a list of things that happened to us here rather than write it in the usual fashion, as I just think you will appreciate our feelings toward the place easier this way.

Firstly, we couldn’t get a room. I left Donna in a café with the bags and went traipsing around Copacabana looking for somewhere to stay. I must have gone into at least 10 places, none of which had any rooms available. Just as I started to get really frustrated, I unwittingly walked into the middle of a funeral procession and had to walk with them for at least 15 minutes as I could no longer go back, and overtaking the coffin seemed somewhat inappropriate!

Once I finally found a place to stay (naturally, this was next door to the café Donna was in) I went to the front to pay for the drink that Donna had whilst I was out and about looking for accommodation. The friendly old fella behind the counter said ‘Ocho’ (8), so I paid him and we left for the hotel. Once in the hotel, Donna asked how much the drink was and when I said 8Bs she replied ‘but it was only 7Bs on the menu’….. Friendly old man, I think not!

Laundry was the next thing we had to do whilst here and after asking a lady down the street how much it would be per kilo and getting the response of 13Bs, we decided to go with her. On our return with our bags full of washing a day later, and having plonked it on her counter, she said that it would be 15Bs per kilo…? Once we had pointed out that yesterday it was only 13Bs, she very kindly said that she would do us this discount and make it 13Bs….!! Why do people insist on trying to con us here!!??

Anyway, as petty and ridiculous as this may sound we just seemed to attract these incidents the whole time we were in Copacabana and therefore it wasn’t really our favourite place in the world. I think by the end, we actually just found these ‘issues’ amusing and laughed them off. That was until we ordered a full three course meal and the restaurant tried to get away without giving us our Banana and chocolate sauce….that was just a straw too far!!

Anyway, as frustrating as it was, Copacabana wasn’t such a bad place, it just wasn’t happening for us there, but luckily for us we came across our friend Helen from the Inca trail trip, and we decided to meet up whilst in La Paz, so every cloud……

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