Copacabana and Isla del Sol

Copacabana is a strange small town but I kind of liked it. We arrived mid afternoon so spent the rest of the day looking around.

There is an interesting walk up the Cerro Calvario, a hill that is just on the north of the town. Its a pretty steep walk but its interesting because you get to watch people performing a sort of religious ceremony. I wasnt exactly clear as to the what the whole process meant but I believe the people were wishing for things in their lives. Was strange though when the local performing the ceremory starting squirting beer into the air and setting off fire crackers!

The beach is pleasant although has a funny smell to it. We decided to rent one of the many pedalos on the beach, especially laid out for the tourists. It was fun if not a bit cheesy.

The restuarants there are all pretty similar, offering trucha (trout) as the most popular main dishes.

We stayed in the HI hostel Brisas de Titicaca. It was clean and reasonable but be wary it has a 10pm curfew. They informed us that it would be ok to knock after this and still get in, but apparently it wasnt when the time came! After some few loud banging they eventually let us in at 12pm and into our room.

To get to Isla del Sol you take a boat from the beach in Copacabana. We decided we wanted to stay the night over there so took all our belongings. You can get off on the north or the south side. We choose to stay in in the north in the village Challapampa. The village is very very small but an interesting place to stay. There are pigs, sheep, cows and dogs wondering around everywhere.

Its very easy to find somewhere to stay as women come to meet the boats when they come over. We ended up staying in a place called Hostel Pacha Mama, which was extremely basic but then only 15 bolivianos a night!

The thing to do on the island is to walk and eat trucha, so thats what we did.

Theres a local boat that you can pay for a ride on back to Copacabana that leaves at 8.30am in the morning.