No, not that Copacabana. Copacabana, Bolivia, which is certainly not the hottest place south of Havana. However, it is the major Bolivian city on Lake Titicaca and has an enoumous cathedral. It is also chocker block full of tourist and pretty much everything in town seemed greaded towards pleasing gringos... including the only mexican food serving restuarants i´ve seen in a month. The real reason for coming here, however, is to access the Isla del Sol.
Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) is where the Incas believed the sun was born. A large island with many peninsulas jutting out from it´s side, it is plop in the middle of Lake Titicaca (litterally translate in spanish that means boob shit but to the incans it was the name of their god which took the form of a puma). Lake Titicaca is the worlds highest navegable lake and is unevenly shared by Peru and Bolivia, with about 60% of it being in Peru. But Bolivia lucked out and got Isla del Sol.
So despite some rain, our little group decided to take the long way and hike three hours around the lake to then take a boat to get to the island. Though derenched, it was a beautiful hike with some excellent views and one shrine to the virgin. There were also some killer up hill bits where we got repeatedly passed by local women carrying huge packs and wearing plastic shoes, not hiking boots.
After pulling his boat out of the reeds, our boat driver sped us across the channel, and to avoid paying a fee to use the dock, litterlly dropped us at the first possible rock on the south end of the island. Following nothing but our sense of direction, we headed norht and greatly surprised two farmers when we came over the hill. Luckily there aren´t too many trails and we headed into town, led by two eager five year old boys, and stayed the night.
The next morning we got a late start but were still determined to hike to the north end of the island so we could see the ruins of temple there. Led my two male French travel companions, we got lost and ended up walking through quite a crops and taking a few more ups and downs then needed. After finding the main path, we then walked by beautiful coves with white snady beaches and through small towns with adobe houses and lacking in any signs of modernity, except a few signs for Coca cola. We happened to pass through one when school was getting out and had tons for kids passing by us asking for caramelos!!
Upon reaching the north end, which was even more basic then our previous night´s acomidations, we decided to stay another night so we would have time to hike to the ruins. This time another boy from the place we were staying wanted to show us aroudn and so he did the 45 mintue hike with us to the ruins, where he kept throwing rocks and the hundred year old walls. You could tell where rooms had been and it was quite impressively perched on the side of the hill just under the Holy Rock. However, we enjoyed watching the donkeys who were also in the ruins almost as much.
Going back the boy asked if we wanted to take the coast route or the mountain. We choose the mountian, and with a dissapointed look from the boy. We headed up, up, up. Hiking always invovles some ups and down, but when you are 3,800 meters (by my calculations that´s like 1100 feet) above sea level, it is a bit harder. Anyways at some piont the boy started leading us down, without any obvious path. So after a bit of rock scaling, we seemingly fell back into town in time for dinner of trout, a local lake speciality that was introduced from Canada.
We woke up early the next morning to take an early boat back to Copa with a bunch of local all carrying thier goods and one ecentric old British man who kept taking pictures of the people, which i found a bit disrespectful as they kept flinching. But, after hiking from litterally one end of the island to the next, I can see why the Incas found it holy.
No comments:
Post a Comment