Hotel Rosario del Lago Copacabana

La Paz to Copocabana

The first ride today with the new group turned out to be a day to remember. Our original plan was to ride from La Paz to Puno and visit Lake Titicaca from there, however, because of strikes in Peru the country was off the itinerary for a couple of days. Our other option was to visit Lake Titicaca on the Bolivian side.

After a good training ride with the new clients we were ready to start our adventure. The ride out of El Alto is very slow as the traffic cong...

28th - 30th April 2008 On Mon 28th, I caught the bus from La Paz to Copacabana. The journey took around 3-4 hours and we had to cross the lake between San Pablo and San Pedro de Tiquna. Checked into the hotel with a great view of Lake Titicaca from my room. I then wandered around the streets of Copacabana and managed to buy a ticket for a tour of Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) on the lake. The Island is is the legendary Inca creation site and the birthplace of the sun, according to Inca myt...

July 1 - I was woken up by a combination of my alarm clock and a wake-up call from Tour Leader Kate, who came by to drop off my KE duffel bag and mug. While Catrina calmly got ready, I hurried to repack what I needed for Lake Titicaca, securing a bag of things to leave behind in La Paz. I gobbled down breakfast (too bad, the buffet was nice...), left my luggage at the desk, and ran onto our very luxurious bus, parked outside the hotel. I was about 10 minutes late - not the best first impressi...

Another day, another Copacabana. This one is on the shores of Lake Titicaca (the highest navigable body of water in the world), about 6Km from the Peruvian border, and it`s all rather lovely. I came here a few days ago, took up residence in the Hotel Rosario Del Lago, then moved on to Isla Del Sol (Island of the Sun) for a couple of days. Now I`m back in Copacabana again, getting ready to cross the Peruvian border tomorrow. The journey here was by bus, so you travel mostly by road, although a...

We really enjoyed the hectic pace of La Paz. It just sort of makes sense. Everyone does the best they can with what they have. Women line the sidewalks in the morning to sell jackets and jeans. If they sell just one jacket or two, they are doing okay. The average wage in Bolivia is about $2 per day. In the short distance of La Paz are several mountain ranges including a tall volcano mountain (20,000+ feet) with snow. Our hotel in La Paz offers a shuttle bus ($8 each) to their sister hotel, Ho...

..... so the strains of the Salkantay trek and the brilliance of Machu Picchu behind us we had a day chilling in Cusco, which involved quite a lot of sleeping and minimal walking. Any road with an incline was deemed out of bounds!! From there we headed to Puno, described as a pretty town on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The journey from Cusco took about 6 hours, and was fairly painless. We arrived just as the sun was setting and our hotel was well located behind the cathedral and Plaza de Arma...

30/07/08 Spent a day in Puno and the floating islands on Lake Titicaca on the Peruvian side. the floating islands are amazing everything is made out of reeds, the island, the houses, the the boats and the food. Whenwe were leaving to go back to Puno the sun had set and my God did it get cold fast the temp easily dropped below freezing from about 15 degrees earlier. 31/07/08 Up early and got the Colectur bus to theborder with Bolivia. We had heard some real scary story about an Irish girl bein...

So, limbs aching, we clambered aboard the bus to take the slightly scary switchback mountain road down from Machu Picchu to the one-horse town of Aguas Calientes, named after the natural hot springs that appear in the town. Despite the temptation to shower and sleep, we cleaned up, struggled back into our damp boots and headed up the hill to the springs with our Kiwi friends Anna and Cam. The springs are situated in a remarkably beautiful setting with near-vertical mountains surrounding them ...

Whether we are tired out of cities, or just tired out of Bolivia we're not sure but we left La Paz to retire for the weekend on the shores of Lake Titicaca at a small town called Copacabana. Lake Titicaca is two lakes joined by the Straits of Tiquina and has several small islands that can be visited. The waters are a beautiful blue, reflecting the hills and the distant Cordillera Rey Mountains. The lake borders both Bolivia and Peru and close to the border is Copacabana, 158km from La Paz on ...

Arriving at Puno four days behind our proposed dates was not a very good start. The strikes and blockades in Cusco were lifted, (briefly), and our original daytime luxury bus to Puno had to be taken at night in a rather sad old coach that was cramped and bumpy, the service was poor and the usual cheery hostess basically ignored all the passengers; perhaps she too was fed up with the demonstrations that had disrupted the city for so long. Getting into Puno in the rain at 4.30 AM. is not the be...