Lake Titicaca
My last stop in Bolivia was Copacabana,, a small town on the shore of Lake Titicaca. After a morning on the bus from La Paz the first thing I did when I arrived was to go to one of the small stalls by the beach to try the local speciality of Lake Titicaca trout, very nice. I spent the rest of the day looking round the town. I happened to see a very strange event outside the cathedral, the daily blessing of cars. Loads of people come and park there, decorate there cars in flowers and ribbons then the priest comes out and blesses each car individually. All about strange, but after spending many hours on Bolivian roads it does make a bit of a sense.
The next day I went on a trip to the Isla del Sol, an important Inca landmark. After a very slow boat ride we arrived at the north of the island where we had a guided tour of some Inca ruins. This is the first Inca site I have visited so I still have a lot to learn about them. Then I had a really nice walk across the top of the island to the southern end before getting the boat back to the town.
From Copacabana I crossed the border into Peru and stayed in Puno, a town on the Peruvian shore of Lake Titicaca. The town was a bit more industrial than Copacabana and other than a nice main square it doesn´t really have a lot to talk about, but outside of the town there are a lot of archaeological sites. I decided to spend the afternoon going on a tour to Sillustani, which is apparently the highest necropolis in the world. This was a really interesting trip, the site has funeral towers built from 1500BC to the time of the Incas, so you could see how the design of them evolved and they became more complex as building techniques developed. And our guide was really good and explained all about the Inca beliefs and how the towers reflected them. The site itself was also in a really nice position, on a peninsula in a salt walter lake, so it was a nice place for a walk just before sunset. On the way back in to town we stopped at farmers house where they showed us around, talked about how they farm and we tried some of their food. All the farming is done manually, looked like very hard work and the women are expected to do as much as the men. The food was interesting, mostly a lot of different types of potatoes which they eat with a sauce made from mixing clay and water, not the most appetising of dishes.
The following day I went to visit some more islands on the lake. The first stop was the floating islands, islands made out of totora reed roots and are literally just floating on the lake. A few hundred people still live on these islands in small villages. Although it is very touristy and the islanders basically put on a show explaining about the islands, their history, how they are built and their way of life, it was still a really interesting place to go. The next stop was Isla Taquile, where we had a nice walk across the island to the main square. Had a look round there and then had lunch. The inhabitants of this island also seemed to have a relatively traditional lifestyle and it was interesting to see them wearing the traditional dress. Different colours and patterns on their clothes indicate things like whether they are married and their status in society.
The next day I took a long bus ride to Cusco. It was supposed to take 6 hours but somehow it managed to take 10, but I eventually arrived in Cusco in the evening.
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