Lake Titicaca – Puno and Copacabana

Time for another update. I’m now in Bolivia staying in Copacabana, the original.

The last three days has been spent either on or by Lake Titicaca, the highest commercially navigable lake in the world.

Three days ago we came from Cusco to Puno, where we had one night. In the evening we went into the centre of Puno and came upon some kind of celebration. A parade through the main street with music and the occasional firework.

Yesterday we started the day by being picked up by “limousine”, rickshaws, and pedalled the short trip to the harbour where we boarded boats heading for the floating island of the Uros people. The islands are built by the floating roots of reed and covered with reed to make a platform on where houses are built. We were greeted by a family that told us about the life on the lake and how the islands were built, and then we went on a short ride on a reed boat.

Felt a bit Thor Heyerdahl there for a moment. On one of the islands there were dancing and music and we later found out that the presidents wife was there for some ceremony.

We found that out when we came back to the mainland and was greeted with police blocking the street and a motorcade coming to the harbour.

Back at the hotel we got lunch and then packed our buses for the trip toward Bolivia. The trip to the border was uneventful and with minimal delay we were able to get checked out of Peru and into Bolivia. From the border to Copacabana was only a 20 minutes ride and we were able to get settled early.

Last night we decided to have a little drink before going for dinner. I guess you can say it got to be a bit more than a little and it was a very happy bunch of people that had their first dinner in Bolivia.

Today I went to the island of the sun, and island in Lake Titicaca that is supposed to be the origin of the Inca people.

The island is not to far from Copacobana, but with a bout doing 6 knots it takes a while, almost two hours. On the way out there the rain was pouring but just before we got to shore it cleared up and we had wonderful sunny weather for our hike across the island.

Our first stop was the Sacred Rock, and then a labyrinth-like building called Chicana. After that we started our trek from the northern part of the island and to the south. We used about three hours on the walk including a quick lunch half way through.

The walk took us over the highest point of the island which is about 200 m above the lake. Bringing us to 4068 m.s.l. Strange to thing that this is almost as high as Dead woman´s pass on the Inca trail.

And the trail we followed could also be considered an Inca trail, it has certainly been used by Incas.

On the slow crawl back to Copacabana we enjoyed the view from the top of the boat, clouds came in but we haven´t seen any rain .. yet.

After Copacabana we travel on toward La Paz