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Published: October 26th 2005
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Isla de sol
from the boat, at drifting speed. I bought a first class ticket out of La Paz as I was in such a hurry to leave. It was a lovely bus ride to Copacabana, with a large assortment of retired people on tour (who are generally the only people who travel first class), through some lovely country side.
Copacabana is pretty tranquil, but very touristy. It really has only one attraction; the Isla de Sol, the birthplace of the Incas. Well, it has another attraction, the Virgin of Copacabana, and the temple which dominates the town square. The temple is completly out of proportion with everything else in the town it´s pretty hard to miss but has one of the finest alters in Bolivia. But sadly the chruch was closed for repairs so I didn´t really see it, except for a hazy glimpse through the dust the workmen were kicking up. So I will mainly stick to the Isla de Sol.
The Isla de Sol is a two hour boat ride from Copacabana. Now, it is barely 15 ks from Copacabana, so you can workout how flippin slow the boat moves. Or I´ll save you the effort and tell you it´s about a slow jog.
Actually, as I was walking down the hill to the whalf to catch the boat, I spied the German from my trip across the Salar de Uyuni. I had left him over a week before, and he was supposed to be in Arica or somewhere. So I walked over and shook his hand and got to talking. As soon as I mentioned that I had come from La Paz the day before, he begain straight into a triade about how terrible La Paz was; that it was the worst city he has ever visited, and how he lasted one afternoon there before he decieded to flee, and chose Copacabana, and that´s how he got to be here. So I´ll stand by my last blog, and say it´s not just my opinion. It really is a terrible city.
Anyway, the walk across the island takes 3 hours, and they only give you 4 on the island, so I decided to camp overnight there. So all tourists got off the boat, raced up to see the ruins of an Inca settlement up on the north end and raced down to the south to catch the boat home.
I walked over the
The two Germans
on the beach, on the way to the ruins island with the German and another German we met on the boat over, who was also camping overnight. German number two only had a hammok, so he needed trees, and I had a tent so I went up the northwest end of the island (there is no trees there), and he camped down the south end. German number one floated back to Copacabana and took a bus to Arica, via La Paz, poor sod.
No one esle was camping up the north end (it´s actuall the west end, but they call it the north end) of the island, so I had a nice little beach to my self, and a terrced hill covered with sheep. The weather packed in for about an hour, just before sunset, but it cleared sufficently just as the sun went down.
And there I stayed, without a sole for miles all night and the only people who came passed where two tourists about 8.30 in the morning, but they stayed up the top of the hill, and were nothing but passing dots on the horizion.
So I made a cupa tea, took a skinnydip in lake Titicaca, which is about 10 degrees and
The ruins
on the Isla de Sol therefore made it just a short dip, and rejoined the new flock of tourists, who had justed arrrived by the boat, about midday at the ruins, and walked back over the island with them to catch the boat back to Copacabana. I would have liked to have spent another night there, it was so peaceful watching the sun set from the island of sun.
As a side note, I had been warned that the Inca Virgins come back at night the seek their revenge, but nothing appeared or happened at all. And I was actually quite interested in meeting some Inca Virgins, since it dosen´t appear that there are any virgins in Chile (all the girls there are pregnant), but I´ll have to wait for another ocasion. Sorry Mum, I´m still single.
The next day, back at Copacabana, I walked up the Horca de Inca, a small hill behind the town that has an Inca sundial on it, and some other sretch-your-imagination (if that is a Condor, I am a monkyes uncle) features as well.
Then it was down to catch my first class buss to Puno, in Peru. But the damn scam artists here, stuck me
Local weaver
on the Isla de Sol. This machine is just a have. The graments he sold to German number one, certainly weren´t made on a machine like this. on the normal bus to Puno, which costs half the price, and told me to take my complaints to the travel agent in La Paz. The first class bus had gone back to La Paz, as there were ony a few of us booked on it.
So off I trundel to Peru, knocking knees with the locals and the other backpackers, dreaming of that lovely seat I should have had.
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