Sunny and Freezing on the Isla del Sol
Trip Start
Jan 28, 2008
1
62
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Trip End
Sep 18, 2008
Isla del Sol,
Bolivia
Friday, July 4, 2008
The Isla de Sol is a very important island to the current Quechua and Aymaran peoples living in the Andean ranges of South America. They consider themselves decendants of the Inca civilisation. The Isla de Sol is said to be where the founding Inca was given the order by the Sun God to go and find the Navel of the Earth. From Lake Titicaca he travelled north until he found the site where Machu Picchu was then built. I am sure if you googled this you would get a much better myth.
Cam and I were very tired after zooming around Brasil and Bolivia, and decided to spend three nights on the Island, a luxury in many travellers time budgets
View to the Royal Andean Mountains
. We arrived in Copacobana via La Paz by bus, and took a small ferry across the lake to Yumani, the southerly village on the Island. It took us almost two hours to walk from the pier up to the village, which was situated on top of the hilly island. We were struggling with the increased altitude, as well as our continally present head colds. The weight of our backpacks didn´t help either. Some local children accompanied us up the ridiculously steep steps, one boy asking me every so often if I was okay. I stubbornly said I didn´need any help, telling myself it was good training for the upcoming Machu Picchu trek.When we finally got to the top and found a hostel, we enjoyed an amazing golden sunset over the lake. The water turned gold, the sky pink. No wonder the Incas called it the Island of the Sun.
We treated ourselves to three sleep ins in a row! This meant we didn´t get up at the gruelling 5 or 6am that we have been doing for the past 2 months. (Yes mums, no wonder we haven´t shaken our head colds). We did two walks around the island. One around the Southern tip, past an Inca house ruin and mostly following steep Llama trails. The second, we got a boat to the Northern end of the island, and walked back across the backbone, visiting some of the northern Inca ruins
It was tough going up those steps
. On this trip we walked with Ziggy, a British born, Spanish speaking, Austrian-based adventurer. She was celebrating her birthday. We gave her a Chuppa Chupp as a present, but I think the friendly company was more what she appreciated.The Island is really a great place to chill out, although at night it was a little too chilly. We had all our woollies on, and slept in our sleeping bags under the doonas. Our throats were so sore in the morning from breathing the icey-cold air. Our hostel was run by three young women, sisters. I called them Cinderella and the 2 ugly sisters. The youngest sister ran around trying to make all the tourists happy. She was very friendly, completly the opposite of her two older sisters, who were hard-headed and sullen, and who got annoyed at guests over things like ´excuse me, but there is no water to flush the toilet, wash my hands, etc...´
Once again, we had to say goodbye to our little retreat, and headed back down the Inca Stairway (easier to appreciate on the down hill), and jump back on a ferry, back to the Copacobana Bus Station. We were also saying goodbye to Bolivia, as our next stop was Puno, Peru!
