Lake Titicaca - Copacabana

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We left Peru on 1st November, with high hopes for Bolivia and Copacabana as a chilled out gringo-friendly town. We travelled by coach from Puno, to the border, where everybody disembarks in order to walk between Peruvian and Bolivian emigration.
Fortunately we Brits have free access to Bolivia. US citizens have to pay $140!! There was a slight hiccup on departing the Bolivian border when it was discovered that the American gentlemen in front of us had skipped the border without paying and jumped on another bus! (Sarah nearly regretted admitting to witnessing this when the border police started prowling up and down the bus!)

We arrived in the town of Copacabana and hiked up the hill to our hostal, which at 4,000 metres with two backpacks is very hard work! It was a Sunday and a very quiet day in town, so we had lunch down by the beach and wandered around to take in the sights (that takes about 5 minutes in Copacabana).

The most interesting trip to do from Copacabana is over to the Isla del Sol, so we decided to make this our adventure for the next day. However, we had seen the rickety old and overcrowded boats leaving the beach, so we decided to head out on the 'road less travelled' as recommended by the LP. After all, we had wanted an adventure. This involved walking around the lakeshore to a place called Yampupata, on a peninsula just opposite the island, and catching one of the local boats. So we set off (in a taxi to take us the first few km out of town). From there we set off on our hike, enjoying the day, the sunshine and the spectacular views over the lake.

We had only been walking an hour and a half when we were suddenly accosted by an old local man with a broad hat, a huge smile and an enormous bundle of postcards. Senor Hilario Quisp-Paye is a well known feature of this trek, as mentioned by the Lonely Planet and Footprint guides. He is a very friendly chap and insisted on showing us his whole postcard collection, from people all over the globe who have walked past his house and promised to send him a postcard when they got home! A couple of hundred postcards later and a lot of pigeon Spanish, he had persuaded us into catching a lift over to the island in his boat, which is obviously his pride and joy. A very happy skipper indeed.

Not being an authorised tourist transport, he couldn't actually drop us in the harbour, so he dropped us off on the rocks at the end of the island, promising it was only 10 minutes walk uphill to the town of Yamani. Forty minutes later, we finally reached the top of the hill and the beginning of a settlement, but according to the map we were following (very small scale map in the guidebook - silly us!) it wasn't the town we were looking for, so we hiked on up the island, still enjoying the beautiful views. After another couple of hours walking, we couldn't believe we still hadn't found the town of Yamani, so tried the 'ask the locals' approach. 'Donde es el hostal?' They were happy to point us in every direction and agree with us that it was any house we could see on the top of the hill. By now we were very frustrated, hot and hungry and we seemed to be rather lost on a relatively large island. Still trying to remind ourselves that we had wanted an adventure!

We decided to head back in the direction we had come, which was generally the direction the locals had pointed us in and finally almost by accident found our hostal (Inti Kala) perched high on the hill overlooking the other side of the island and the lake. A half-constructed, but very reasonable hotel in a fantastic setting. We found a lovely little pizzeria just along the road, where a lovely lady was happy to serve us cold beer and truche a la plancha (grilled trout - staple food at Lake Titicaca) - perfect after our day’s hiling.

The following day, we took the standard tourist boat back to Copacabana.

From Copacabana, we travelled by bus to La Paz, around the lakeshore to a crossing where everyone had to leave the bus, which was transported across on a very precarious-looking barge, while we crossed as foot passengers on a standard boat. It was slightly nerve-wracking watching the bus loaded with all our belongings listing across the channel! The remainder of the journey was spectacular as we crossed the altiplano towards La Paz and the Cordillera Real.

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