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Published: October 14th 2008
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We buy a one way ticket to the Isla del Sol and after about an hours crossing land at the village of Yumani. From the dock we walk up La Escaldera del Inca, a staircase built by the Incas up past the natural spring Fuente del Inca which, flowing down 3 channels, represented the Inca moral code: ¨Ama sua, ama llulla, ama khella¨, ¨Don´t steal, don´t lie, don´t be lazy¨. The Spanish believed it to be a fountain of youth...Ritch was about to dive in head first til we noticed it´s now just used for laundry.
Climbing the staircase, and indeed just walking on level ground wipes you out at this altitude. It´s hard to get your head round being 4 kilometers above sea level, and sunning yourself at a lake. Incredible really.
We find a trail that´s following the East side of the island...this is the path we´re looking for. We walk across ancient agricultural terracing through villages unchanged for centuries, above bays straight out the Greek islands. After a couple of hours we reach our destination, Challa a tiny village blessed with white sands. It´s barely midday and we´re all set for a long afternoon on the
beach...it´s a hard life!
No sooner have we set up camp on a small wooden jetty and started to shed clothes, than the local school closes for the day and a steady stream of kids come to gawp. The boys swagger pass and pretend they´re not looking...until they dissolve into giggles. The girls are equally stunned by Ritch´s bare cheast and the giggles become universal. It´s not even like I´m in a bikini, but shorts and rolled up t-shirt are shocking enough...I guess I´ve not seen a bare midriff anywhere, the locals preferring knitted jumpers in this 80 degree sunshine.
One little girl appears shunned by the other children and painfully shy. Whilst the other kids rush on home in big noisy groups she walks on her own and seems to have nowhere that she´s in any hurry to get to. She quietly sits nearby for hours and pretends not to be looking at us as our hearts break at her sad demeanour. We share our picnic of biscuits, but not the beer, with young Rosa and I think she slips deeper in love with Ritch, who is equally smitten and later moved to an act of philanthropy
that will feed her family for a few weeks and put a stunned smile on her face.
We spend the rest of the day til sunset sat on the stoop of our excellent room at Hostel Qhumphuri. Actually it´s almost a suite! We have a private bathroom, massive double and a west facing lounge...all for less than $6! So we sit on our porch, drink cold beer, watch the sunset and later the stars, and doubt that life gets much better than this.
The next day we have a leisurely morning before continuing our island trek, heading north to the next village Challapampa. Calling it a trek is pushing it really...more a leisurely clifftop stroll in the sun for an hour! Challapampa is a bit of a dissapointment after Challa, there being no sandy beach, just scores of donkeys, pigs and sheep along the shoreline and lots of boats moored in the reed filled shallows. But we make the best of it with some decent (and v cheap!) Chilean Cabernet Sauvingnon and the day flies by!
We wake early to another hot sunny day and after a leisurely big breakfast get going on the final straight...an hours
walk to the Chincana ruins at the northernmost tip, followed by a couple of hours walk back south to the port.
The Chincana ruins are way more extensive than I´d expected: an intricate labyrinth of walls and doorways on the northern tip of this sacred island...the location for the Incan creation legend. They believed that the sun was born here from behind a large rock to the east, shaped like a crouching puma called Titi Khar´ka (Rock of the Puma) hence the lake´s name. They also believed the first Incas, direct descendents of the sun god were mystically ´born´ here: Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, his sister who is also his wife, which is why Incas had tails (just joking).
We head off along the West coast for the port, a couple of hours away. We´re surrounded on every side by the expanses of wide blue water, the air is incredibly clear and the high altitude sunlight makes everything so vivid and crisp. This coast is rocky and uninhabited and absolutely beautiful. The rocks under our feet sparkle white and pink quartz, and sometimes the blue green of malachite.
A slow boat back to the mainland leaves
me hungry and sleepy. We sort out bus tickets to La Paz for the next day, have a fish supper (the fresh trout here is really wonderful) and crash early. Feel like I´m getting a cold.
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