Copacabana

The clear blue shore of Lake Titicaca
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Almost two weeks after first arriving, I was reluctantly escaping the madness of La Paz for the idyll that Copacabana and Lake Titicaca promised.

The bus wound its way alongside the lake and even crossed it at one point, eventually after what looked like a lightning strike/extended lunch break by the boat captains. There were little bathtub boats for passengers, and essentially large floating planks of woodto take across cars, trucks and buses including ours, that have to be seen floating to believed.

It felt more like a Greek island than the shores of a lake in Bolivia

Wiaitng for the boat across to Isla del Sol
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Copacabana isn't the hotest joint north of Havana (that's the other one in Brazil), but a chilly town of the shores of Lake Titicaca that was toursity but still pretty pleasant to be in, wit plenty of souvenir stalls to shed the last of my Bolivianos in.

But the lake beckoned, and the next day I set out to walk from the town up the peninsula to cross over to Isla del Sol, the Inca birthplace of the sun. It was a baking hot day already by the time I set off, walking out of town following behind a small man in a pork pie hat, who would look behind nervously every so often and scurry ahead before I caught him up again two minutes later. Made me chuckle.

The view from my 2 Pounds a night hostel window
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The road took me up and along the road above the sparkling shoreline that felt more Greece or Turkey than Bolivia. It then went through the trees and up a steep ancient Inca road, where I had to stop every three steps to catch my breath. I had lunch in the welcome shade of a little wall in a village by the lake and soon after I met another couple walking the same way, Thijs and Helen from Holland.  We walked the rest of the short way to the harbour together, and took a small boat bobbing across the stretch of glimmering azul water to the harbour of Yumani, where scores of day-tripping gringo were leaving from.

A warming cup of fresh trimate as the sun goes down
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Being Bolivia, we first had to climb the very steep stone steps to the village proper at the top, then further to find the hostel from the guide book. But it was worth it, as we all got our own room for 25 Bs (less than two pounds a night) with a fantastic view of the lake.

With the sun setting and the chill setting in too, we went for a wander of the craggy village, reaching the crest and finding a row of simple hostals and restaurants with terraces on the other side. So we sat and watched the sunset, me with a trimate tea made with three fresh types of herbs and plants - coca, menta and delicious muña - that we watched the owner's wife scurry off and pick from the same hillside. We then stayed and sat huddled by candlelight while she grilled the most amazing fresh trucha (trout) from the same lake.

A beach! On a lake! In Bolivia! And yes, it was this beautiful
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The next morning, we set out to walk to the north of the island. We were barely out of town before we came across the north-south checkpoint (the two halves don't get on apparently!), which inevitably meant paying yet another bolleto tourisico charge for the privilege of carrying on. We did just that, chewing coca leaves to help with catching our breath.

We reached the north and the site of Inca ruins, which were crawling with more day-trippers and a bit of a let-down, looking more like the walls of tumbledown cattle barns than the site of an ancient civilisation.

We double-backed to the northern port of Chincana, dropping down to the village with its little crescent-shaped beach and bobbing fishing boats that again felt like being on some hidden Greek island than on the highest lake in the world.

We caught the afternoon boat back, enjoying a cinammon ice lolly on the way and having dinner and a few drinks together before going our separate ways - me into Peru.