just perch yourself here on this large stone erection…
Our hotel in Copacabana was awesome – nice rooms overlooking Lake Titicaca. I was excited that they had laundry service, and I took nearly everything I had to be clean, including all three of my pairs of socks. I borrowed a not-so-dirty pair of Shelley’s, so my feet wouldn’t be cold, and found a nice piece of duct tape inside (used on the Inca Trail to prevent blisters). Mmm…that was nice.
We walked into town determined to have a good night. We had decided to take the next day off, skipping the Island of the Sun to sleep in and relax, since we had not done that the whole trip. The town seemed really dead; a lot of places were shut. We did find a nice restaurant though, warm and with super comfy couches that we melted into. We also ran into the Swiss German guys again and invited them to our table.
We ordered a bottle of wine (La Concepcion, from the highest vinyard in the world). The guy shook his head at me. “What, you don’t have it?” He explained that they were not allowed to serve alcohol; there had been a fight in a club five days earlier and someone had died, so the town decided to prohibit alcohol sales for a while. “But we already had a few beers here today, and this is our night to relax and have some drinks! We don’t have to get up early tomorrow!” He did not sympathize with us (rules is rules), and so we left to find another place, leaving the Swiss German guys at our table, ditched again.
We had dinner and a few bottles of wine down the street, but it really was just enough to make us tired and sleep well, which we did. The next day was as relaxed as we planned – we slept in and did some souvenir shopping. At night, we went back to the place that refused to serve us the night before. There’s a private room to rent and watch movies, which we did. They did serve us that night, under the condition that we drink from coffee cups and put the beer bottles under the table. They all agreed that it was a stupid reactionary measure, but the police did stop in to take a look, so they had to oblige.
The next day was a celebration for the Patron Saint of Copacabana (whoever it is…not sure), and there was a huge parade through the town, with elaborate costumes on the order of the Curso de Cursos festival in Cochabamba. The Bolivians really do it up. In the afternoon, we took the bus back to Puno (Peru), and had no problems crossing the border this time.
Once back in Puno, I was repeatedly pissed by people trying to rip us off (crap hotel for way too much, missing eggs for breakfast that were promised, cab drivers overcharging and lying about minibus routes). We did find a nice taxi driver that took us to another town to see the Inca Fertility Temple.
The Fertility Temple was smaller than we imagined, but it was still entertaining. Our guide was an 8-year old boy, who led us into the stone wall structure. Inside, there were tons of stone penises, some pointing into the ground (for Pachamama, or Mother Earth), and others pointing up (for the god of the universe). At the front of the temple, like an altar, was a larger penis, propped on a stone likeness of a man. Women who were having trouble conceiving would perch themselves on top of this large stone erection in an effort to help them conceive a child. We learned all of this from our 8-year old guide.
The next day was the girls’ last day…we took a morning tour to the Floating Island of the Urus in Lake Titicaca. The Urus people (who now have interbred with the Aymaras from the mainland), have lived on floating islands made of reeds for hundreds of years. Somehow, this avoided conflict with the Incas way back in the day. The islands are made from thick layers of reeds (which are found all along the shore in this area), and are anchored by rocks; they pulled up a rock, attached to the island by a long line, to show us.
They also eat the reeds; we tried them and they weren’t good or bad…if I lived on these islands, I could probably get used to it. The people live mainly on reeds and fish, although these days they probably go to the mainland to buy other food. There was a boy cooking, and I guessed that they must have to be really careful with fire on the islands; apparently they had a big fire only once.
The people live in huts made from reeds (on one house there was a solar panel to provide energy for a TV), their mattresses are made from reeds, and their boats are made from reeds. We took a reed boat ride to another island, where there was an odd museum with stuffed birds in it. On the third island we visited (there are tons of islands), there were little hotel huts, a little reed phone booth (normal phone), and a little reed outhouse (with normal toilet). The local church was nearby, but neither the church nor the island was made from reeds. They had a little fish farm there with trout and kingfish, and we watched a local lady cut up little fish to feed to them.
We headed back to town, went to a disappointing market, supposedly the best in Peru, but it came way shy of that. We got a cab for the girls to take the airport, and they dropped me off at the bus station. We said our goodbyes, and they pulled off, leaving me once again out on my own.
Tags: Bolivia, Copacabana, Peru, Tag Index
Tania