Lake Titicaca - Copacabana/Puno

After 5 amazing days in La Paz we headed up to Lake Titicaca for a few days. The lake is 95km wide and over 300km long and straddles the border of Bolivia and Peru.

The journey to Copa was 4 hours and took us past the huge snow capped mountains outside of La Paz and through the countryside of Northern Bolivia. Before long we came to the smaller but equally impressive Lago de Huynaymarka, which is just south of Lake Titicaca. We then reached a little town call San Pablo de Tiquina, where we had to hop of the bus and jump on a tiny boat to be ferried across a stretch of the lake where the road cannot cross. Our bus followed us on vehicle carrying boat that looked as if it may sink at any given moment. We crossed to the equally little town called San Pedro de Tiquina. Did you notice the difference in town names? Pedro and Pablo.....very subtle. From there the veiws of the lake got better and we eventually turned a corner and got a glimpse of the beautiful lakeside town of Copacabana. When we arrived we went for a walk about the small town, which seemed to be inhabited mainly by hippes - it's a very chilled out place. On the evening we decided to climb the the top of the Cerro Calvario on the edge of town as it is a great place to watch the sun set. Unfortunately cloud started to move in and the sunset was a bit of a non-event. We did get to watch a great electric storm over the lake though.

The following day we got up early to do a 17km trek from Copa to a little town called Yampupata. We set off from Copa to the outskirts of town and soon found ourselves in the countryside surround by bulls, pigs and llamas. The scenery along the way was amazing, passing through little farming villages and climbing up to paths that hugged the sides cliffs over looking the lake. We eventually came to a beautiful bay in which we could see Isla Del Sol and Isla de la Luna. We walked down into the bay, which took us to the town of Yampupata.

We intended to spend 3 days in Copa, but we later found out that there was a strike on the road between Copa and Cusco, meaning that we would have to travel to Arequipa to enable us to get to Cusco. This meant that we were going to have to cut our stay short by a day.

The following morning we got up early to travel to Puno. It was a four hour bus journey, 10 mintues into which we had the dodgiest border crossing yet. The Bolivian border officials are known for being a little corrupt and they lived up to their reputation. Mel and I were not the unfortunate ones, instead they picked on a couple of young English lads. They tried to extract the equivilent of 30 pounds from each. Obviously the lads politely refused but the guards were having none of it. After about 5 miuntes of angry exchanges the lads managed to get the officials to stamp their passports, at which point both lads ran out of the passports office and legged it to the Peruvian border to get the entry stamp for Peru. The officials quickly hotfooted it after them and tried to stop them before they crossed the border. Fortunately the lads made it to Peru and quickly got the required entry stamp and got onto the bus. The whole episode was very comical, but also pretty serious as these officials do have the power to retain you within the country if they choose to do so. Finally the engines of the bus started and off we went, leaving the fuming border guards behind.

We eventually reached Puno and tried to find out the best way of getting to Cusco. Several bus companies were offering an alternative route to Cusco through mountain roads, but Mel rightly pointed out that this was not the best idea as the bus was an overnighter and the driver would not be all that familar with the route, plus it was really expensive. So we decided to take the longer but safer option to Arequipa, then a overnight bus from Arequipa to Cusco.