Copacabana 3,841m

Farewell Peru

A la Race Across the World, we decide to take back-to-back night buses from the jungle to Copacabana, which is just over the border in Bolivia, on Lake Titicaca. We’ve decided to skip the Puno side of Lake Titicaca after reading reviews of “the human zoo” that the Uros Islands have become, and decide not to find out for ourselves.

Taking night buses saves us some money in accommodation, but it means many hours spent waiting for the next night to travel through. We do this sweltering in the agency office in Puerto Maldonado before getting on the lie-flat bus of Exclusiva, then head back to the hostel in Cusco where our big bags are, and spend all day trying to not get found out that we’ve spent more hours in their lovely communal areas than we have in an actual paid room there. Thankfully, they don’t seem to question our coming and going as we recharge our devices, read, use their wi-fi, bathroom, printer and kitchen.

We realise this day will be our last chance for Peruvian food, so we decide to go to Papacho’s, a burger joint off the main square, started by one of Peru’s most famous chefs Gaston Acurio. We get a table on the terrace looking out onto the main square, enjoying the sun (but no longer the humidity), happy hour chilcanos, juicy burgers, fantastic service, and a forest fruit dessert as a treat from James. It’s a lovely way to say goodbye to Peru.

We make our way to Cruz Del Sur to get on our next night-bus and settle in for the ride to Puno where we’ll change busses to cross the border. According to the schedule, we’ll have a couple of hours to kill in Puno bus station at 5am, but thankfully our bus seems to have taken just the right amount of longer than expected, and we arrive perfectly on time to jump straight on our next bus with Transzela.

The border crossing is surprisingly smooth. We get our passports stamped on the Peru side (even though we never got stamped in), walk across the land border, and get stamped into Bolivia. I enjoy crossing as a typical backpacking Brit this time and avoid the interrogations I used to get from Bolivian border control when crossing on my Peruvian ID in the past, “How are you Peruvian?”. Thank you British passport.

In our bus there is a French family of 2 adults and 3 children under 10. We marvel at how they’re able to travel with the same size bags as us, and we’re not providing for 3 small humans! (This will be the first of a few families we see travelling around and never cease to be impressed at those managing to travel latin-america with children in tow… we’re finding it challenging enough just us!)

Hello Bolivia

The bus drops us off and we make the brief hike up to our next hostel, practicing how we can try and sob story our way into a free upgrade (we’ve seen rooms with terraces available). I muster the courage to embrace my inner ‘Diana Cooper from Lima Peru‘ (blagger of upgrades extraordinaire), and find there are already some tourists there. I’ve never seem a blag infront of others before, and I instantly revert back to Alexandra White of polite and smiles. As luck would have it, we get offered an upgrade without even having to ask or beg, and rejoice at our incredible room with stunning terrace looking over the lake. But most importantly, an actual bed.

We look forward to some serious down-time and recuperation after a full-on month in Peru.

But first, we need money. We wander into town and do a lap of the small centre. Finding a cashpoint, we try our shiny, new Starling bank card that promises to give us good international rates and unlimited withdrawals, not once, not twice, not even three times, before admitting defeat and letting the next man in the queue give it a go. We wait outside figuring out what to do. The error message just says an equivalent to “computer says no” so we start to have a crisis that we’ve royally screwed up (lack of sleep may have heightened our dismay somewhat!). We hear the man we let through successfully withdraw cash, so we know the issue isn’t a lack of it, but perhaps there’s some limit we don’t know? So, we decide to give it another go, and then realise a small Visa logo on the side, and realise… Starling is Mastercard. As is Monzo. Oh how complacent we are in the UK being able to just use any cash point! Relieved at realising the issue, we spot another cashpoint and hope it takes Mastercard, it does! Success. Crisis averted. All is not lost. Confidence regained. We can stay in Bolivia. Smiles and celebrations (it’s the small things that can make a big difference when travelling!)

James has sussed out a place for lunch on the lake-front and we get some well needed lunch. It’s a tiny makeshift eatery under plastic tarp with plastic tables and chairs and the menu printed on hanging boards at the side. The dish is trout, and my word is it tasty! A fellow gringo walks in and asks us about wifi, we tell him we don’t know but we doubt it, but loe and behold when he asks the staff they give him a password!

After a successful lunch, we check out the food market to stock up for some home-cooked meals again, and head back to the hostel to rest and sleep and make a plan for the next few days.

Isla Del Sol

The next day, we’ve decided to head to Isla del Sol for a day trip. We enjoy the most fantastic breakfast at the hostel (fruit, juice, yoghurt, puffed cereals, eggs, pancake, bacon, avocado, cheese and bread) and head down to the boats to get one over to the island. We jump on the top of the boat, life-jackets on, and head off at a speed not too much faster than rowing over to the island. It’s a glorious view though (albeit a little cold with the strong winds) and we enjoy watching the world go by and the sun reflect off the seemingly endless lake (that I keep calling the sea).

Upon arriving at the North part of the island, after a bit of confusion and worry at getting lost (there’s no map anywhere!), we seemingly find a path and spot other gringos and figure we’re on the right track. We pass by glorious white sand beaches, completely empty except for a few pigs and piglets, clear blue waters, and blazing sun, and are reminded of the Greek Islands, the only difference seems to be the lack of tourists sipping cocktails on sunbeds!

Nevertheless, that’s not the life for us, as we continue the walk up, pay a lovely man the entrance fee to the north part of the island, and keep plodding to the end. We reach a sacred stone and explore a ruin of some kind of settlement that’s still pretty well preserved.

We decide against hiking straight up the mound infront of us and follow a path around the side… except the path seems to just keep going around and around. The views are impressive, but what we really want is to get to the top, so we go off piste and walk straight up to get some spectacular views of the ruin and the lake.

We realise we need to get a move on as there’s still a 3 hour hike to go to get to the south end of the island before the last boat leaves at 4pm, sí o sí.

It’s actually a harder walk than we imagined (or I remembered!), I think largely to do with the hot sun, altitude, and “Inca flat” path that seems to never end going up, down, up, up, down, up more. However, the views are worth it and we enjoy the quiet and calm and peace of the island, except for a few other mad gringos also walking the trail for fun.

Under some eucalyptus trees we spot an old man sitting on the wall with a bamboo stick. He looks like he’s been sitting out here all his life, with his dark, brown and weathered skin, but kind face. The gringo that just passed us has been stopped by said man. My initial thought is he’s begging for money, but he stops us also and says something. The gringo looks at us blankly. We look back blankly. The old man looks at us expectantly, but without any outstretched hand. All three wondering whether we should be paying attention to the old man or just walking by, but something tells me he isn’t a beggar. I try and speak to him in Spanish but he is so softly spoken and his lack of teeth makes it really hard for me to understand what he’s saying, not for lack of trying on both our parts. I think I gather that we need to pay our passage into these here parts. There’s literally nothing here except the old man and his stick. He’s not offering any ticket like the previous man, there’s no sign of a ticket office, he’s just a man asking us for 5Bs each to go passed, or else we get a good lashing with his stick? I explain we’ve already bought a ticket, but I think he tries to explain that that only covers the North, there are payments to be paid to the Middle and South people. This actually agrees with what we read up on prior to coming, so we decide to go ahead. But not before the other gringo looks at me dubiously, clearly suspicious and disbelieving this man is anyone other than someone trying their luck. We pay our dues and leave him to decide whether he trusts the man (and to an extent me) or makes a run for it to face a potential stick thwacking. As we continue on, we ponder the same, but decide that whether he’s a swindler or not, he needed those 10Bs more than us, so it is what it is. A few hundred metres down the way, we see a ticket office… perhaps he was a swindler after all! Except it’s closed, and no-one is in sight. From what we can deduce, is perhaps the middle people decided it’s not worth paying someone to sit in the office all day for the handful of mad gringos, and instead recruited old man to sit in the shade further up the path and do the job from there. We will never know, but I’m glad we chose trust, one way or the other.

As an aside, I previously read that the island is split into three communities, the North, Middle and South, and you are expected to make payments to each for your passage. During one point in time, the North was cut off (I forget whether by their own choice or the rest of the islands) and you couldn’t go to that part at all. Thankfully it has opened up again now.

Back to the walk and not pondering old men with sticks, I am amazed once again with the different geology of the path we walk along, and how anything seems to grow here, including a lone tree out in the fields on the cusp of a hill. We labour on, watching the clock, and realising for the first time in our lives, the backs of our legs are actually getting sunburnt!

The rolling mounds of increasing steepness finally end with some amazing looking lodgings, and many a cafe and restaurant, as we realise we’ve made it in enough time to get some late lunch with an incredible view.

We have some more amazing trout, and chip quickly off to make the last boat… except we don’t actually know where it is. Signs all point to anywhere but a port, so we figure we just go down and hope for the best. The path winds and drops and we start passing gringos lugging up huge backpacks up the steep stairs behind us and figure we’re on the right track (and definitely made the right call taking this route). Time is ticking as we seemingly make little progress, but eventually we see a sign for the port, and skidaddle down the Inca stairs, buy our boat ticket, and jump back on top for it to depart on time (but not before a silly squat in a ruin).

Whilst our boat out was probably a bit faster than rowing speed, this one is probably on par or slower than rowing speed, but we’re in no rush, and enjoy watching the sun sparkle overhead, seeing the south-side ruins from the boat, and the slow plod back to Copacabana.

Relax

With the main tour we wanted to do done, laundry and money sorted, the rest of our stay is a laid back one. We decide to try and go for a run along the lake-front, slow and steady being the name of the game, as we plod along admiring the view. It’s definitely harder work than normal to get in the groove, but get there we do. Until a security dog comes barking after us and we stop and try and calmly walk away whilst our heart beats faster than it was trying to run at altitude! Along the way, we see families enjoying a swim and play in the shallow waters, beautiful signs reminding people to care for pachamama and not litter, some happy and calm dogs, and people-wagons and cars wearing shiny top-hats and draped in flowers. We later find out that this is because people bring their vehicles to Copacabana for blessings to protect them whilst on their journeys. It’s a hard run, but nice to be moving again.

We enjoy the rest of the day having lunch out and then I climb up to a viewpoint to get my last take on Lake Titicaca. The view is even more incredible, and it’s easy to see why there’s tributes, Candles and a big cross up here (as well as cholitas selling their wears of course).

I notice and appreciate a seemingly dead tree with beautiful red flowers growing out of it. Like so much of this dry part of the continent, life and beauty finds a way to survive:

Back at the hostel we enjoy our last sunset over the lake from our terrace, watching the stars come through, and the horizon show a perfect rainbow, mimicking the rainbow flag we have seen and continue to see representing the Andean communities (of course the photo does it no justice):

We try and spot the constellations above, as the night grows dark, and we say goodbye to the amazing hostel and place we’ve been able to recharge our batteries in. Tomorrow we bus down to La Paz, which will no doubt be a huge change of pace.

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Adventure – crossing the border into country and month 2 of our trip, exploring both ends of Copacabana bay, from a random closed gate on the run to the highest point at the lookout, exploring pre-incan ruins and solitude of Isla del Sol

Excitement – a bed! Amazing breakfast, the best fish ever three days in a row, making meals out of whatever we could find in the market, street popcorn, star-gazing, having catch-ups with family

Trauma – panicking about not being able to get any cash, finding Bolivia not as cheap as we thought