Island of the sun
Trip Start
Dec 14, 2007
1
173
187
Trip End
Mar 16, 2009
Isla del Sol,
Bolivia
Thursday, December 18, 2008
We arrived at the southern tip of the island and were met by the curator of the little museum who took us for a guided tour of the facilities. The museum holds a few artefacts that were recovered from and underwater village near the island and takes only a few minutes to visit. We then along with the curator headed to the far northern point of the island to see a sacred rock that was possibly used for religious ceremonies of flogging wrong doers.
A few minutes walk further north we arrived at one of the better preserved ruins which was actually designed as a labyrinth with many little rooms and passages. It was interesting to see but nothing spectacular after visiting Machu Picchu. From the northern tip we had three hours to make our way to the port in the south to catch the boat back to Copacabana.
The walk took as along the ridge of the mountain running through the island via a rocky path. The island was very little natural vegetation and is largely cultivated with potatoes, corn and other local agriculture. The path also had a few toll gates along the way where you had to buy a ticket to pass, I assumed the money went to the community who maintained the path. A few industrious little girls tried their luck at creating their own little toll gate by tying their jerseys together and pulling them across the path. I'm not sure what there price was but we paid them a salt cracker each and were allowed to pass!
Compared to the island on the Peruvian side of the lake we noticed that people wore very little traditional attire and there was not much difference to the local people we saw in Copacabana. So from a cultural perspective we would recommend that more time is spent on the Peruvian islands that in Isla del Sol.
At the end of the day it was quite a brisk walk to get to the southern port and we managed to arrive with only about thirty minutes to spare, so no real time for lunch. In hindsight we should have taken along a packed lunch with the hotel provided for a small fee. From the port we made a brief stop at the Bolivian version of floating island where were in fact not real and rather wooden pontoon covered with reeds. You could walk around and take photos for a small fee but since we'd visited the real floating island in Peru we decided to give this a skip.
Back in Copacabana we enjoyed our last evening in our comfy room before catching the bus to La Paz the following morning. Copacabana makes for a pleasant stop over between Puno and La Paz but doesn't deserve more than a two day visit.
