Boozing on Bolivian Buses

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Margrethe returned later that day (Sunday) and although we were planning on travelling to Copacabana on Monday, we took little convincing to join Tom and Dave on a bus that same day. Beers were purchased for the journey, and we all fell into a deep slumber - waking up to be told that we were to get off the bus and onto a boat. Querying what would happen to the bus, we wre informed it was being transported on another boat. My brain couldn´t quite deal with this logic, but I meekly complied. Eventually we arrived in Copacabana. Food was a priority, and after polishing off a cheeseburger and spaghetti carbonara I fell sound asleep in front of the TV in Tom and Dave´s room. A little too soundly asleep for Margrethe, who upon returning from the pub with some guys we met on the bus, couldn´t rouse any of us to get her room key, and had to spend the night in their spare bed. The next day, she decided to go to Puno with them, and I stayed in Copacabana, making plans to trek to Yampupata and catch a ferry across to Isla del la Sol, spending a night there and returning to the mainland for Halloweén.

The trek started well, with good weather and stunning scenery. Things started to go wrong about 1pm, when, reaching a fairly sizeable shrine, we missed the most obvious path in the world. We headed down to the beach for lunch and proceeded to walk along the shoreline - a plan that worked perfectly well until we ran out of shoreline. We paddled around the first sheer cliff, only to find that the second was deeper and longer. At this stage, the island looked close enough to swim to, but we had no option but to retrace our steps. After a few more false starts along trails which looked very promising until 300m when they vanished without trace, we found ourselves heading back to Jesus (there´s a message there somewhere...). Finding the path we had missed first time around, we continued on our way slightly the worse for wear.

After about another hour, we were confronted by a man with a boat. At this stage, Yampupata was still nowhere to be seen, and tempers (well, mine certainly) were beginning to fray. When he dropped his price from 80 to 50Bs between us, we were sold. We spent the next 10 minutes watching him bail what he assured us was rainwater from the bottom of his (tiny) boat, and proceeded to sit back and relax as he rowed up across. The notion of ports didn´t seem to interest him unduly, and he unceremoniously dumped us on the first bit of rock he arrived at - another 40 minutes from Yumani. When we eventually reached the settlement all that was on the agenda was hot chocolate, dinner and bed.

The next day bore an uncanny resemblence to it´s predecessor. The Lonely Planet, and I quote, remarks "networks of walking tracks make exploration easy". In fact, numerous tracks, many of which again peter out abruptly, make it almost impossible to find any of the island´s points of interest. After about 3 hours of walking, we came across the northern port, which appeared to be the gateway to most of the sights. The museum actually proved to be very enlightening - the Inca civilisation was much later and much shorter than I had believed, and on Isla del la Sol, subsumed a much older, longer running tribe called Tiwanaku which formed in 1200BC and reached their peak in 1000AD.

The nice man at the museum also gave us a map of the northern ruins, and we set off feeling slightly more confident. The scale proved to be non-existent. 2 hours of walking later, we had seen a stone, a small stone table and some walls. Despite the lack of Machu Picchu-esque ruins, our spirits remained high - the views had been spectacular, and we returned to the Northen part in the knowledge that we had seen most of what the island had to offer.

The northern port showed a distinct lack of ferries. Having declined to check when and where the last ferries left for the mainland, we were forced to charter a local fisherman, at exorbiant prices, to take us back to Copacabana. His 2-motor hardboat wasn´t quite as novel as the rowboat which had delivered us to the island, and the journey took a long time, but we didn´t make the mainland in one piece, before the onset of the storm. Our hotel´s 11pm curfew put paid to our plans to party, and Halloweén was spent watching "the 40 year old virgin" in bed with carry-out beer.

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