Copacabana - We love Bolivia!
Trip Start
Jun 12, 2008
1
14
28
Trip End
Nov 20, 2008
Copacabana,
Bolivia
Monday, August 11, 2008
Copacabana is a nice small town and it was very easy to find our way to our hotel. Inside it was so orange I thought I had vision problems, but we had a very warm welcome and noticed that there was free coca tea and fresh fruit...we were starting to like Bolivia already
Cathedral
. We headed out to get some lunch and wandered round the restaurants, we were looking at the menus and were surprised at how high the prices were. But hang on...weīre in a new currency now (where incidently, the coins look like "pieces of eight" a pirate would have)...quickly do the maths....Dom waits for George to do the maths..."Wow, thatīs cheap!" The rumours were true, Bolivia is ridiculously cheap! Now we were loving Bolivia. We ate our lunch with big smiles on our faces knowing that we no longer had to worry about the budget so much. The only problem with Copacabana was that it was freezing at night and our hotel room did not feel like that warmest place to be. So the next morning I woke up with a cold and the luke warm shower didnīt help matters. However the smile returned to my face when I saw the size of the breakfast we were served. Definitely our best hostel breakfast so far, there was cereal, yoghurt, fruit salad, bread, a pancake, eggs, bacon and cheese!
In the morning we wandered up to the cathedral, the outside is beautiful and the building is massive given the size of the town. We visited the Chapel of the Candles, which contained something I hadnīt seen before in all the cathedrals and churches Iīve visited. People light candles and then use the melted wax to draw a picture on the wall of the thing they are asking for
Cathedral2
. There were lots of cars and houses, and a few men and women! Outside the cathedral we had arrived at the time of the Blessing of the Cars, which turned out to be a very amusing half hour. Everyone parks their car (haphazardly) outside the cathedral and decorates them with paper decorations, flowers and all sorts of things, some people even tie a bottle of wine on! The cars then get blessed, and everyone attends a short service, and then there is utter chaos as people try to get away! People are trying to move their cars, others havenīt been to the service and are just trying to drive through, and some people have just abandoned their cars and gone off somewhere. Women are trying to direct their husbands and shouting a people who get in their way, there is a lot of beeping of horns (as if that will help!) and one poor policeman was trying to sort the situation out but was just going red in the face from blowing his whistle so much. We stood and watched and could not believe what was happening; this happens every day apparently!
In the afternoon we went down to the lake and rented a pedalo; our pedalo was a huge yellow and red swan! Lake Titicaca wins the prize for the most sparkly body of water I have ever seen. It is so beautiful and the water is lovely and clear, so we had a nice hour weaving in and out of the boats
The blessing of the cars
. We then hiked up the hill behind our hotel to watch the sunset. I thought this would be a quiet, romantic experience but it turned out that half the town had had the same idea! Itīs obviously a popular thing to do because indigenous ladies have set up stalls and sell drinks and snacks!The next day we went out to Isla de Sol for a hike. The island is where the first Incas "appeared" and is the mystical birthplace of the Inca Empire. We took the slowest boat in the world out to the island, we were crammed in like sardines and it took a full 2 hours to get to the island. But once we got there it was worth the slow journey. We had a lovely walk, the island is very dry and dusty and quite barren but that makes the contrast with the blues of the sky and the lake even more beautiful. We hiked for about an hour up to the ruins of the Temple of the Sun at the top of the island where the Incas appeared and then walked all the way down to the bottom. We had a great day and it was good to be able to walk on our own, when we stopped you could not hear a thing, it was wonderful. At the end of the walk we had the long boat ride back to Copacabana which wasnīt so nice because by then I had had a bit too much sun for one day. But a shower and some coca tea soon sorted that out!
And thatīs the end of Copacabana, we had a brilliant start to Bolivia and already love it. Itīs so much more relaxed than Peru and because 60% of the population is indigenous (and there arenīt so many tourists) we do feel like we have found the South America we were expecting. Next stop, La Paz, the capital.
