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A Walk on the Isle of the Sun (part one)
Entry 13 of 16 | show all | print this entry |
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If you want a place to chill out, listen to some cool Afro Latin music and watch the water lapping at the shore - come to Copacabana.
No, not the place that Barry Manilow sang about in that 1970s hit, nor the Central Coast town either. I am referring to Copacabana in Bolivia, on the other side of Lake Titicaca.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copacabana,_Bolivia
Compared with other South American resort destinations, Copacabana is still undeveloped, slightly off the beaten track enough to be described as laid back and therefore especially appealing to this certain traveller and her cough cough, tummy trouble, which could be described in this part of the world as ´Tupac Amaru´s" revenge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupac_Amaru
My decision to forgo a visit to the famous Floating Islands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uros or a homestay on Amantani Island was easy. Simply in my current state, I couldn´t face another day of being immersed in Peruvian food, dance, and the joys of cold water for the morning ablutions, let alone having to politely shove aside another wizened - faced wily mama who wanted to sell me her handicrafts. I know others have enjoyed the excursion and homestay but hey - tourist options are like deciding on your choice of wine. Each to their own.
That´s why I decided last Monday in Puno to take the southern shore route direct to the Bolivian side of this huge lake - (and I mean huge - as we all learnt at school, Lake Titicaca is the highest, navigable lake in the world. It has a surface of 8.560 square kilometers and a maximum depth of 227 meters and it contains 36 islands).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Titicaca
But the first direct bus was not until the afternoon. So on the advice of the young helpful female desk clerk at my Puno hotel, I decided to take a local combi (like a shared taxi) 18km outside Puno to a village called Chucuito whose chief claim to fame is the quirky ´Temple of Fertility". This supposed ''Inca site" has a collection of large stone phalluses which women find most - interesting (yes, my Spanish is improving and no, I´m not going to go into details, albeit to say both the young clerk and I had a good giggle at the time at her explanations).
Sadly, when I got to Chucuito, none of the locals could actually point me in the right direction of the said temple, and so I returned to Puno early afternoon none the wiser as too its authenticity nor to its mystical effects.
If you are curious, here´s my attempt at a cut and paste photo - most of the links I found ahem, had some additional interpretation
I ended up being ´chaffeured´ to Copacabana when my bus turned out to be a minivan with me as its sole passenger - a most pleasant two and half hours drive by the Lake thanks to Fidel the driver and Simon, who was there to escort me through the Peruvian and Bolivian border formalities - both completed in a couple of minutes and without the aggravation some fellow travellers had warned me about. (In fact the Bolivian official seemed rather surprised that a) I was single and b) I was not spending more time in his country).
And so, late on Monday around sunset, I arrived at Hotel Los Andes, a friendly informal establishment run by Jose´, his wife and their five children. My room was cheerily and authentically decorated, and the large windows opened out to a Juliet style balcony with a partial view to the Lake itself.
So far my tummy had behaved itself - in fact upon checking into my room, I felt upbeat enough to sign up for a boat ride out to the Island of the Sun and the popular 11km Inca ruins walk for the following morning (yesterday Tuesday )
That is when the gods started to tell me I was being optimistic. As soon as the dark settled in, I began to feel a little queasy. Not a good sign. I decided to have something light for dinner and turn in early.
I walked down the almost empty ´main tourist strip of Copacabana´ ignoring the five pizza joints and two hippy cafes and the sleazy bar attached to a hostel, finally ending up in a simple Bolivian family run restaurant (the children of the family were doing their homework on the tables in the restaurant - the eldest girl who would have been about nine years old, acted as the waitress when she wasn´t working on her project on Egypt).
For 15 Bolivianos (about two dollars) I had a bowl of quinoa and vegetable soup followed by a small piece of battered trout, chips, vegies and rice washed down with home made lemonade. (I haven´t had any alcohol for days which shows I must be unwell.)
It would have been before 7.30pm when I returned through the still rather quiet streets back to my hotel and to bed.
Sad to say both the bed and meal was wasted on me as I spent most of the night in the bathroom (thank goodness I opted for a room with a baño privado).
And so I woke yesterday morning having missed my boat connection and with the realisation I didn´t have the energy to walk up a flight of stairs let alone attempt even a short high altitude hike, so for the first time in this trip I decided to properly focus on Rest and Recuperation.
I dosed myself on eletrolytes, mate de coca, pills in two different colours and a litre of bottled water and spent yesterday morning in my hotel room watching Bolivian day time TV - and all four channels were seemingly devoted to the day´s special significance. It was Mother´s Day in Bolivia.
By late afternoon I felt slightly more human (or was it getting stir-crazy) and summoned up aenough energy to explore the town of Copacabana itself. It doesn´t take long if you stick to the bottom of the hills. So I walked past the local school (there was a Mother´s Day Concert in progress and noise level was loud enough to reach across the lake to Peru), visited the town´s cathedral and ambled down to the water´s edge.where I watched the bobbing boats for another hour or so, over a banana smoothie and the soothing tones of The Eagles - Hotel California (which ´must be on the sound system of every bus company, restaurant, cafe, shopping centre etc in Peru and Bolivia).
Thus revitalised I decided that today, Wednesday, I would finally venture to the Isle of the Sun, take my time with the walk (my last for this trip), and return in time to Copacabana to catch the evening commuter bus to La Paz.
Which sounds logical enough until you experience Bolivian public transport.
So to wrap Part one - a music item. Let´s go with Barry Manilow hit because it is cheesy and silly and admit it, you thought I would immediately go for the Eagles....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaEubU8X-QE
cheers
Debra
Where I stayed:
Hotel Los Andes
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