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Published: March 8th 2007
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From La Paz, we decided to head to Lake Titicaca which straddles Bolivia & Peru; it’s claim to fame is it’s the highest navigable lake in the world (at 4200metres) but it’s also got huge historical significance because of the Inca ruins still remaining. There are quite a few hilly islands on the lake, dotted with gorgeous traditional villages. We chose Isla del Sol (Sun Island) on the Bolivian side, apparently the birthplace of the Incas. It has only about 1000 people all of Aymara descent. They are quite secluded from the mainland, speaking their own dialect, rarely leaving the island, all living by subsistence methods…growing or fishing everything they need
We were getting a bit lazy and also didn’t have much time, so decided to sign up to a 2 day tour to get us from La Paz to the island/show us around/arrange accommodation in a basic guesthouse. But turns out we were the only ones on the “tour” so in fact we scored our own personal Bolivian guide, Ricki, who didn’t leave our side for 2 whole days, even for meals. We loved him, he was a great character and we learnt heaps about both modern and
traditional Bolivian life.
We almost didn’t make it there, however. On the bus (pooled with other people) about 20 minutes out of La Paz, we were hit by the sudden realization that we’d left our passports, flight tickets, basically all essential documentation, back in the safe at our hotel. In our rush to get ready that morning (the bus had been early, a rarity for South America, and had actually found us in bed when the arrived) we’d totally forgotten about them, and we were now on a bus heading for the Peruvian border. We had to stop the bus, Nath had to get off, hop in a cab back to our hotel, while the bus continued out of La Paz with Ashleigh on it, to somewhere on the outskirts of town where Nath was supposedly meant to meet the bus again…all of which was executed perfectly somehow and we were on our way again, passports clouched tightly in hand.
Arriving at the lake’s edge, we felt very VIP as we boarded our own personal boat across to the island, about an hour away. Upon arriving, we hiked up the steep hills, through steeply terraced farms, walking past
donkeys & pigs, stopping at Inca ruins along the way. We reached our village which was gorgeous and quaint, perched on the top of the hill overlooking the lake and the islands beyond. There are no roads or cars, just narrow dirt paths up and down the hills, and donkeys and llamas to haul the loads. There are a couple of basic guesthouses and ours was delightful with million dollar views….watching the sunset from the balcony and hearing absolutely nothing….how’s the serenity!!
The meals at the guesthouse we awesome, especially the local favourite, trout, straight from the lake below us…definitely the best fish we’ve even eaten.
Unfortunately, we woke to poring rain the next morning which we had to trek in for 30 minutes to get to the boat. We returned to Copacabana on the Bolivian shore, a nice small chilled out town which is quite pretty with the lake in front and huge mountains rising up behind. The church there was spectacular and quite famous apparently…it houses the Bolivian Madonna which people come from across the country to visit. It has never moved from the church as the Bolivians believe the Lake will rise and flood the
country if this happens. We saw heaps of cars out the front of the church being blessed, covered in flowers and all kinds of trinkets…again, people come from all over to bring ‘good luck’ to their new cars.
The following day we left to cross into Peru. As the bus drove through the Peruvian countryside, we stumbled into a massive local market day which was typical Peruvian chaos. There were dozens of shared ¨taxi¨ vans parked along the road as that´s how people from the region get to the market - dozens of people are crammed into each one, and on the roofs of the vans were sheep that were flattened and strapped down. We couldn´t work out if they were dead or alive but figured they may be alive and people had just bought them from the market.
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