Isla del Sol

My first stop in Bolivia was Copacabana. However, I spent all of about half an hour here before jumping onto the next boat to the Isla del Sol - an island in Lake Titicaca about an hour and a half away from Copacabana. It has a reputation for being beautiful and my first taste of Bolivia was not disappointing!

The boat ride was enjoyable and nice to relax, although I think one of the ladies opposite wasn´t feeling quite the same. When we docked the first thing that we were all faced with were people asking for money. For each of the towns on the island you had to pay entry and they wanted the money for the ticket. We had barely reached land! The next challenge was to climb up to the village. As I had got off the bus from Peru and got straight on a boat I had all my stuff with me and climbing up the stairs at about 4000m above sea level wasn´t easy.

Once this had been accomplished and I´d had a much-needed shower (a night bus does very little for hygiene) I started to explore the island. It really was beautiful. It was about 4 so there was plenty of sunlight but all the day tourists had left. This meant that the island was relatively empty of people and was so peaceful to walk around.

Lake Titicaca is huge an it was like being off the coast rather than in a lake - you couldn´t see the Peruvian side of the lake at all. You can see some of the mountains on the mainland of Bolivia and they seem to have been painted against the sky - it was a gorgeous walk.

The next morning I watched the sunrise over the mountains. It really was beautiful and it was an added bonus that I got to watch it from my bed. Although in the sunshine it´s very warm - especially because of the altitude - during the night it can get very cold so I appreciated being wrapped up in blankets!

The previous day I had just walked in the south of the island and I got up early to walk across the island to see some ruins. I had been told this was a ´moderately hard, 3 to 4 hour walk´. It was a very easy one and a half hour walk. It was an easy path to follow and you could always see the lake on both sides (the island is very small). You walked over the ridge and got to see most of the island. Although there was that was rare or not found anywhere else (that I know of, it´s veyr possible I´m just ignorant) it was great just to walk along with the lake in sight. As it was quite early there was also no-one else there, which was brilliant!

I saw the ruins in the north of the island and I have to admit I wasn´t massivley impressed, but after seeing so many in Cusco I wasn´t too worried about seeing them. Although the French people camped in the middle of them was interesting.

To walk back to other end of the island I was able to walk a different route that was nearer the shore. This went through some forest and you could see more of the shore on the east side. Nice to have something different and I also walked through a village were some children ran up and asked me for photos. They were very enthusiastic!

By the time I got back to the hostal I was very tired as I had ended up walking for about 6 or 7 hours. However, it was well worth it and I headed straight down to the boats to Copacabana. I wasn´t the only one who was tired - during the boat trip everyone was asleep!