Lake Titicaca (Bolivian side)

The biggest disappointment in South America! Well, ok its not that bad, its just a big, touristy lake. We arrived at the Bolivian side of the lake (Copacobana) after a coach journey and boat ride from la Paz that took about 4 hours in total. We got off the coach at the lake and then had to get a little boat across whilst our rucksacks stayed on the coach which was ferried across by a little raft. When we got to Copacobana we headed straight to a hostel that we had looked up in Lonely Planet. It was a dump and smelt of cheesy feet, but hey, it was only 2.50 pounds for a night and we were only staying one night. The best thing about it was that it had a T.V so we watched two Hollywood movies. One was a really cheesy romcom where JLo has twins by artificial insemination. That night we ate in an American themed bar where the Cholitas swapped their bowler hats for cowboy hats. The portions were tiny but at least there were no hairs in the food. We bought tickets to go to the Isla del Sol the next day which is the birthplace of the Incas and one of the most spiritual places in South America. We also bought a bus ticket to Puno in Peru, meaning we would stay one night on the Isla del Sol and then would have to return by midday the next day to catch our bus to Puno. We were running down our Boliviano currency at this point and had just enough to spend one night on the Island and get back.

St Germain

The next day we got up early and boarded our boat to Isla del Sol. We happened to sit next to St Germain and his partner who spent the journey telling us about middle earth, big foot and sea monsters. He told us he had been reincarnated several times and was the leader of a spiritual group who met up on the Island to enter through a portal to go to middle earth and to go to the city under Lake Titicaca.  Apparently most people are born with only a 2% memory of their former lives but he was blessed with having been born with a 90% memory and could remember everything about his former lives. He had met Joseph (father of Jesus), Columbus and was previously an Inca King who had helped to build the Inca temple on the Island. I could go on forever about what this guy was saying, but instead I´ll just post the website link he gave us. Apparently he is a world famous skateboarder and is in the Guniess Book of records for percussion drumming. His website: St. Germain

After a 3 hour boat ride across lake Titicaca, we finally arrived at the Isla del Sol which is basically a very basic, sparsely populated Island with about 4 shops and 5 hostels. We headed straight for the hostel out of Lonely Planet and it was quite a good choice - it had running water and again was very cheap. It was run by a nice family and we had a private room with electricity. We had left our big rucksacks with us and had packed a little overnight bag for the Island. I had decided to wear jeans as it was freezing on the mainland but on the Isla del Sol, as the name should have told me,  it was very sunny. We bought a little ticket with a map on and decided to try and trek from one side of the Island to the other to see all of the relics. We got as far as the temple that St. Germain built in a former life and were exhausted from the altitude. Also, the fact that we had only had a mars bar and a packet of Crisps for breakfast probably didn't help. Despite being extremely out of breath and sun burnt, we decided to trek on using the little hand drawn map to find the other side of the Island. Lonely planet said that the walk would only take 4 hours but that it was strenuous. After about 2 hours of trekking up hill at very high altitude in the baking sun along what looked like the great wall of China, we realised we would never reach the other side of the Island and that we should try and find our way back to the hostel. Luckily we came across a farmer (the only person we had seen in 2 hours) and he pointed us in the direction of our hostel.

A few minutes late we were scaling the side of a mountain, walking down a sheer cliff face towards the small town at the bottom. When we got half way down I looked up and couldn´t believed what we had just come down. No foot path, just an extremely steep, almost vertical stone mountain face. Somehow we got to the bottom, and just before we were back on normal land, we somehow wandered into a pig stye without realising it and then saw a Cholita chasing a boar across the mountain. For some reason Jemma thought it would be a good idea to chase the boar and grab onto the string around its neck to help the Cholita out. The woman however, did not appreciate this and just said ´no´before throwing a stone at the pig. We left swiftly but were then confronted by a group of little girls (around 5 years old) also scaling the mountain side demanding that we take photos of them and pay them!
The fun was not over yet however, as we turned the corner on the approach to our hostel, we saw a cholita sitting in the middle of the path having a wee in the street underneath her skirt. Only in Bolivia!

That night Jemma was sick (we don´t know the cause, maybe it was the sight of the peeing Chola) and she felt really ill. Nevertheless we decided to go for dinner in the only restaurant in town and have the only meal on the menu - trout and chips. This didn't make Jemma feel any better and unfortunately I wasn´t so lucky with the hair count this time - there were two hairs in my meal. By this time it was only about 20.00 but it was pitch black and freezing cold and I was extra cold because I had decided to have a shower and wash my hair in the ice cold shower. (The family in the hostel actually had to fill up the tank by hand for me to do this - I felt a bit guilty but I stank as I hadn't been able to have a shower in Copacobana). We returned to our hostel to find that we had been locked out so had to stand and knock on the door for 20 minutes in the freezing cold. At one point I saw a light go on in one of the bedrooms so I shouted at the person in the room to let us in but a female voice replied in Spanish that she would not let us in as the hostel owners weren´t around. Finally a passing Chola in the street advised us that the family that owned the hostel lived next door so I knocked on their gate and they let us in. We then whiled away the night playing cards and 20 questions. It was a very long night.

We got up the next morning to catch our boat back to the mainland. The man on the boat the day before had assured us there would be a boat at 10.30 to allow us to be back in time for our bus to Puno, so had the woman in the ticket office. We got to the ticket offiice and a really rude woman told us that unless there were 10 people to fill the boat, the boat would not go and we would have to wait to 13.30 - too late to catch our bus. We waited in anticipation for 8 more people to turn up, and one by one people came - s Swedish girl, a Spanish girl and a Danish couple. But this was not enough to fill a boat. Could we pay extra between us for the last 4 places so that the boat could still sail we wondered? The woman said yes this would be possible. So instead of spending our last 25 Bolivianos on breakfast, we saved it to pay the extra fare. Then, a stroke of luck, the Danish girl informed us that there were another 6 travellers who also wanted to catch the boat to Copacobana. We rejoiced and spent our last bit of currency on 2 mars bars for breakfast. As 10.30 rolled around, to our dismay, the group of 6 traveller started to walk away from the shore. The Danish girl had been mistaken - they did not want to catch the boat at 10.30. What then ensued was a series of heated arguments with the boat staff who insisted that they would not accept extra payment for the spare places on the boat, and if we wanted to boat to go we would each have to pay 20 times the amount! The Spanish girl was pleading with this old sailor who had cheeks stuffed full of coca leaves to take us in the boat and I was getting quite angry, threatening to diss the Island on the Internet when I got home. However, none of this worked and in the end we were told that we would have to wait until 13.30 for the next one.

This was an extremely depressing thought, not only because it meant we would miss our bus to Peru, but also because we would have to kill another 3 hours on the most boring Island in the world. We went and sulked on the beach for a bit and watched a Cholita abusing a donkey, when suddenly, an Argentinian girl came running up to us. This was the same Argentinian who had refused to let me into the hostel the night before and I muttered under my breath to Jemma that I hoped she wanted my help for something so that I could take pleasure in refusing to help her. It just so happened that she did want our help, however it was the type of help I couldn´t refuse. She and her boyfriend had been negotiating with the sailor and were trying to round up 15 travellers to fill a boat back to the mainland. We gladly went with them to try and help them in their mission. We went back to the boat where there was a group of 6 travellers sat in a cafe discussing how to get back. The Spanish girl was there and reckoned if we all paid an extra 25 bolivianos, the sailor would take us. Unfortunately for us, we had just squandered our last few Bolivianos on breakfast. Luckily however, I had some leftover Argentinan pesos, and between the travellers, we managed to work out an exchange rate and buy some more Bolivianos - enough to get us on the boat. In the end though, the Argentinian guy´s negotiations were so good tat he managed to round up 15 people, and the boat sailed at 13.00 with us all on board. (Ok we would only have had to wait another 30 minutes to get on the scheduled boat but it was such a relief to get off the Island, even if the water was extremely choppy and I felt sea sick on the way back).
When we got back to Copacobana, we were stepping off the boat which was anchored extremely far away from the dock, and Jemma dropped her prescription sunglasses into lake Titicaca. They were never to be seen again (except maybe in the city under the lake).
We went straight to the office where we had bought our bus ticket to Puno and explained the situation. She charged us a pound to change our tickets to a later bus that would leave at 18.30. We went back to our original hotel to check our rucksacks were still there and then whiled away the next 4 hours in a cafe that had wireless. We eventually caught our bus to Peru at 18.30 and were not sorry to see the back of Bolivia. A change of country was something we both desperately longed for!