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Published: November 8th 2011
Isla del Sol
How´s this for a Wednesday lunch spot?We have had a rocky start in Bolivia. We sailed off to the Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) in rainy conditions, but it cleared up beautifully once we started hiking. It seems that Bolivians will milk the tourist cash cow at every opportunity, and we were stopped twice and made to pay - it was for the community they said.
The views were superb, with the deep blue Lake Titicaca below us as we hiked along the ridge to the north of the island. We were told there were camp sites, but we never found them. Instead, we found a small private pebbly beach and made a steep scree slope descent to our overnight spot. We were visited by a few comical, curious sheep, but otherwise no one else was around. It poured with rain all night, so we packed up a wet tent and headed to the nearest small town to catch our boat home. We had been lied to again, this time with regards to the boat times. We ended up waiting 5 hours at the jetty. We made ourselves at home outside the ticket office - unpacking our tent and sleeping bags to dry and
Isla del Sol
Our private beach - note the snow peaks in the distance cooking food. Back on the mainland, we caught a bus to La Paz, which is where we are today.
La Paz is a unique city. At 3360m, it is located in a mountain basin - a spectacular sight when approaching from the highlands. After spending a night at a cheap but nasty hostel, we splashed out and booked ourselves into Onkel Inn, a neat, homely place which we have made our home for the past 5 days. La Paz has lots to see and do. We have shopped (Marco bought himself a poncho: his reason was to use it on our smallholding when working outside. Now we just need the smallholding : ) ), visited a church (and consequently were invited for a yummy lunch with an American/Bolivian couple), gone to a traditional music and dance show, seen the Cholitas wrestling (local women in traditional dress wrestling each other in a VERY stupid WWF Wrestling style, complete with props of corrugated iron sheets, vegetable crates and the drinks off unaware audience members liberally sprayed on onlookers) and visited some interesting museums.
Tomorrow we head on a day trip to visit the Valley of the Moon, and the next
Isla del Sol
Camping at The Hole in the Wall - Titicaca style! day we will cycle down the ´most dangerous road in the world´. We have been disappointed with how we have been treated by the Bolivians here. There are occasional instances of friendly people, but when they are unfriendly, they are downright rude (without any reason). Oh, and NO ONE ever has change!!
Highlight:
Enjoying a homely hostel
Lowlight:
Rude Bolivians
What we miss most:
A stove that does not take an hour to heat up!
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Lynne and David
non-member comment
Howdy!
The wrestling looks like something else! Do they volunteer spectators to try their luck in the ring? :-) The view from Isla Del Sol looks amazing. Really beautiful.