Isla del Sol
Next stop Copacabana and the Lake Titicaca from the Bolivian side. Copacabana is the place to catch a boat to Isla del Sol, the centre of the Inca creation myth, well it is if you want to go with the herds of boats which leave at either 8.30am or 1.30pm…we decided to be slightly different!
The night before our 2-day journey, we climbed Cerro Calvario, a hill to the side of Copacabana to watch the sunset with a host of other people , which was beautiful.
The next day, instead of catching one of the day-trip boats, we headed out of Copacabana on foot towards Yampuputa (about 17kms from Copacabana). We never quite made it to Yampuputa, as we were stopped by a man in the village before asking if we wanted a boat over to Isla del Sol. He told us he was cheaper than the men at Yampuputa, and as we were feeling lazy, we had just walked for 2.5 hours, we decided to take him up on the offer! We weren’t that far from Yampuputa, probably about another 45mins walk or so.
It took him about 1 hour to row us across the Lake to the Island, how lazy did we feel? We were dropped at Pilkokaina, some ruins at the south end of the island. From there we walked to Yumani, where we had a welcome lunch (it was nealy 2.30pm by this point and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast!) overlooking the famous stair case up from the lake.
From Yumani, we followed the path along the coast, passing through a couple of little villages and women with donkies, cows and/or llamas. All the locals were really friendly – and we felt like we were the only tourists on the islands (most people catch a boat to Challapampa in the north and walk down the spine of the island to Yumani and a boat back to Copacabana in a day). It was just beautiful, snow capped mountains poking up from the lake, old inca terraces and a very tranquil feel to the whole place.
We finally reached Challapampa in the north around 5pm and had a welcome beer overlooking the lake. We didn’t see many other tourists that evening, which came as a bit of a surprise, but I think most people who stay the night on the island stop in Yumani.
We stayed in a little hostel just down from the boat landing sites and enjoyed an early start ahead of the day-trippers walking back down the spine of the island. We were glad to be ahead, as it meant we had the whole of Chincana (also known as the Labyrith) to ourselves – a host of interconnecting rooms, which were apparently pre-inca. Nearby was a “sacrifical table” – it looked more like a picnic table to us which had been put there a week ago!
The walk was lovely, and it was a bit of a shock to arrive at Yumani and walk down the stairs to the boats with hundreds of other people flocking around. We had felt like we were the only tourists on the island for quite a while!
Tags: Bolivia, Copacabana, Isla del Sol, Lake Titicaca, Travel, Trek
Jenni
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