What a lovely surpirse this little village on the lake was. We found these amazing, funky suites (complete with indoor hammoks and kitchen) that had massive windows displaying Lake Titicaca. Las Olas - remember that name - and stay there if you every have the opportunity. They a expensive by Bolivian standards, but we quickly realised how cheap Bolivia was, starting on our first night with a gorgeous meal at the towns best restaurant, La Cupula. Grilled Trout, salad, wine...the works, and all for only 6GBP! So good it was that we went back the next day, but this time we had a chocolate fondu and red wine for dinner (we are on holiday, we can do what we like)
We spent the first day in Copacabana relaxing, reading in the hammoks and exploring, which meant our second day was destined to be a lot more energetic! We headed off early to the dock and booked a boat to Isla de Sol (advertised as 90min journey, but more like 2 hour trip) on the slowest boat in the world. Think 20hp motor on a boat of 80 people! Any normal boat would make the journey in 30min! The island itself was very baren, but lovely and we followed a long walk along the ridgeline from the north to the south. Now I calmly use the word ridgeline there...remember we are at 4000m above sealevel - this was not an easy 3 hour hike up and down some really mighty hills...my lungs will never be the same again. The locals have cottoned on to all these tourists walking along their island and we were periodically stopped and asked to pay a toll for walking along their part of the path/island/dirt-track! We had been warned about this and insisted the first chap gave us a ticket for our payment, which we produced each time we were stopped by the next man (much to his disappointment and arguing that it was not valid for his section of the path...we only paid once!)
The reward for reaching the south of the island was a very dry sandwich, some Inca stairs and another slow boatride back! Oh joy! This time surrounded by local ladies knitting and falling asleep in a knit-one-sleep-one style...very funny.
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