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Published: September 3rd 2012
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We spent a few more days in Cusco before heading on to Bolivia. There was another festival the day after we finished the trek, seemingly for no other reason that it was a Sunday. There was also a Sunday market setup in the square around the corner from our hostel, where all types of bbq food was available for under a fiver.
After a bit of research we'd found that from Cusco there were no direct buses on to Copacobana, despite pretty much every retailer insisting there is. So we decided to stop over night in a city on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca called Puno. The main attraction from here is the floating reed islands where locals have lived and traded on for years which we unregrettably decided to miss. Apart from that and being a stop over to get to Copacobana there's no real reason to go to Puno, ever. The next day we got on the bus and prepared for our first border crossing. Not too long after we left we got to the border and had to get off the bus, get stamped out of Peru and walked across to Bolivia to get stamped in.
It was all very odd but once we were all done the bus was on the other side waiting for us thank god. Once we arrived in Copacobana we faced a mad rush to find a hostel as we'd arranged to meet Isabella who we did the Inca trail with for some dinner at 7pm. We thought we were due in at around 5-5.30pm but we hadn't realised that Bolivia is one hour ahead of Peru, so by the time we got off the bus and grabbed our bags it was 6.30pm. Hostels weren't advertised online so we pretty much had to rely on a bit of luck to find a decent place, which we didn't get. The first place we checked out the guy wouldn't let us see the room, and the second he did but we made the mistake of relying on his word, he promised hot showers which never happened. There was also a window pane out in the bathroom which he promised would be fixed the next day. So the next morning I asked if he needed the key to get the window fixed and after a bit of hesitation he said that it wasn't necessary,
which sent off the alarm bells and I realised that it probably wasn't ever going to be fixed. It was a learning curve, one where we would now check rooms, and showers to see if hot water comes out! But it was still a common theme in Bolivia, people would tell you anything to get a sale.
Copacobana as a town is a pretty average place. It is quite small but its similar to Puno in the way that it's a stopover point to La Paz and it has an island, Isla del Sol which is a big tourist attraction. The main strip is basically full of hotels and restaurants where hippies try to lure you in all day. There are a few good hikes in the area as well but after catching a pretty nasty cold it was pretty much out of the question. After a few days lounging around town we headed off to Isla del Sol for the night where we had planned to do some hiking and relaxing. The boat over took about 45mins and we got dropped off to the south part of the island. As soon as we got off we were accosted
by a couple local village women, both large enough to block the path up the narrow pier into town. There is a five Boliviano ($0.70) tax to enter the village and these women were on hand to get the money from all the tourists coming off the boat. Luckily me and Amanda were the first off and somehow refused and pushed our way through before the women ran on to the next lot. Next step was to find a place to stay which was pretty much no problem, except the steps up into the village from the dock were ridiculously step, and quite difficult to fight with a cold and the altitude. Once we got a place and dropped off our bags we wandered out to find some of the Incan sites on the island. Isla del Sol translates to Island of the Sun, this is where the Incans believed the sun had originated from so it is quite a special place. But with my cold and Amanda and I not knowing where we were going we didn't reach any. It was incredibly tiring so when we reached a fork we decided to go back for some lunch. At this
fork was a little hut with more locals trying to get a tax out of us. Apparently this point was for the north part of the island, and despite telling the guy that we hadn't come from the north and had no intention of going there he still insisted we had to give him money. So when some a few girls turned up and took his attention away we legged it.
The great thing about this area and Copacobana is that there is fresh trout coming out of the lake constantly, so pretty much any restaurant you go to will have great fish. And the great thing about Bolivia is that it is super cheap. A trout with some salad and rice and chips cost us about $3-4. So trout was on the menu for lunch but we headed back down the stairs to the port as we were told it's the best place on the island for it. This also meant I had to climb back up the stairs of doom to our room and at this point I questioned the worth of our cheap trout lunch.
The next morning we headed back down to the port
for the boat back across the lake to make the bus we booked to get to La Paz. When it was close to time to go some guy came around and he rounded up all the men that were going to be on boat and took us over to a boat that was beached on the shore. Apparently this was the boat we were taking and he wanted us to help push it out with other locals. It was obvious that this in fact was not the boat we would be taking as there were other boats in front that would have blocked this one from getting out, also those other boats were the same as this one and there was no motor on the back of the one we were pushing out. But we tried to help anyway and after about ten or fifteen minutes I had realised these guys had absolutely no clue what they were doing so I gave up and walked away. The bus to La Paz was much less eventful. At one point we had to get off the bus to get across the lake, where the bus was put on this floating tray and we had to take a speed boat across. It was one of the oddest things I've seen, and I assume that the only reason we had to get off was because this floating tray was pretty unsafe. Before too long we were heading in to La Paz, and with it set in a valley of mountains even though it's 4000m high made it look quite spectacular. I had been looking forward to La Paz, just to get into a big city again and from a distance it looked like what I had wanted.
After getting to the bus station it was immediately obvious that La paz was a very busy city. The short walk to the hostel gave a bit more insight, along the main road that goes straight through the middle of the city (also where our hostel is) there are three lanes going both directions and the road is full of buses, chicken buses, mini van buses and taxis constantly streaming past and blasting out insane amounts of pollution. Once inside the hostel it was very quiet and relaxed, so me and Amanda settled in for the night and enjoyed a nice hot shower in what had seemed months.
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