Wednesday 4th May:
And so we come to the end of our two weeks in Peru, and are met by Abad our guide for the two and a half hour ride to the Bolivian border, mostly along the south west shore of Lake Titicaca. Another beautiful morning and the lake is serenely calm. Do we want to stop at a church or a local livestock market, we don't have too much time as we need to get to the border before all the coaches arrived, which can mean long queues at both Peruvian and Bolivian immigration.
We opt for the market, just five minutes but it reminds us of Kashgar, this one with just sheep and llamas. Once the animals are bought they have their legs tied and are bundled into and on top of rickety old vehicles for the drive to their new home. I take a few photographs but folk are not too keen, and one lady takes issue and lobs a stone at me, albeit with a smile on her face. Abad offers her a sol which she refuses, but he explains how we are important people and how tourism brings jobs to the area, perhaps even their children, there now that's told you.
Abad is good company and gives us quite a lot of information, including as we pass through how ten years ago the mayor of Ilave was murdered by a group of the towns people because they violently disagreed with a speech he was making. He also shows us in one town the houses with no windows used to process cocaine brought in from Bolivia. Is there any effort to bring this trace to a halt, no he replies everyone gets their share including the police. He says that his father explains anyone would be stupid not to accept money from the cartels, and that he would if he were a policeman, it would risk his life and that of his family if they did not take the money, and certainly if they tried to blow the whistle.
The border is as you might imagine in the westerns, dusty, languid, and with menacing guards and policemen loitering about the place. We get stamped out of Peru, stroll under the large stone archway and get stamped into Bolivia with the obligatory photograph taken by a large Peruvian logo, and a giant can of Cusquena, the beer we have been drinking for the last two weeks, nice.
We are met by Ivar our guide for the next couple of days and are bundled into an old bus and ten minutes later we are in Copacabana, the Bolivian version. This is apparently a place of pilgrimage, and the large church does justice to that. The church is a Franciscan order but is a place where the synchronicity of Catholicism and the ancient Inca belief in Pacha Mama (Mother Earth, or the Virgin Mother) are deeply intertwined.
Copacabana is very much a backpacker town, and we stroll down to the hydrofoil that will take us on our second tour of the lake, having been pulled forward a day due to our plan to not stay on Sun Island. We join a group of Pakistani Americans from Chicago on a day trip from La Paz. It's a bumpy ride out to Isla de Sol today as the hydrofoil rises and battles with a choppy lake. We get a taste of the climbing we would have had to do as we reach the island and negotiate a lot of rocky steps up to our lunch stop. Quinoa vegetable soup and grilled trout, the staple diet in these parts, not as good as the Taquile Island version, is served up.
And now the slightly surreal part of the day, back to the hydrofoil for a wave bouncing trip in excess of two hours for a short visit to another floating reed island, just one, and in the words of Raul, the other group's guide, "a living museum", or as I might describe it, "another attempt to extort money from tourists". Still, true to form the US contingent spend a good deal of money on the colourful blankets and so it must have been a successful trip. We loiter around at the back and take a few photographs, and don't part with a single Boliviarino.
And so on to Huatajata, our new stop for the night. We wave the US group, farewell as they leave on their bus to La Paz, and we check in. As it suggested on Trip Advisor, there is no noticeable internet here, we're too far from civilisation. Another thing noticeably missing at this hotel is other guests, and it's only as we go up to our comfortable, warm room do we see that the delayed Mexican tourists are arriving and checking in.
An unexpected bonus are the visits to the natural remedy museum and the observatory. The former has been lovingly created in an adobe building by the tour company and as we get to the end we meet a real live practitioner who blesses the remainder of our journey, nice. The observatory is similarly carefully created and after the introductory video, and in the dark, the whole roof rolls back to reveal the sky, rather like being at the Millenium Stadium when it stops raining. Unfortunately tonight there is quite a bit of cloud and the southern cross is largely obscured. The observatory has a large telescope donated by the US Astronomical Society, and on the condition that it is used not just for visitors to the hotel, but also for the benefit of local people including school children, nice.
And so we come to the end of our two weeks in Peru, and are met by Abad our guide for the two and a half hour ride to the Bolivian border, mostly along the south west shore of Lake Titicaca. Another beautiful morning and the lake is serenely calm. Do we want to stop at a church or a local livestock market, we don't have too much time as we need to get to the border before all the coaches arrived, which can mean long queues at both Peruvian and Bolivian immigration.
We opt for the market, just five minutes but it reminds us of Kashgar, this one with just sheep and llamas. Once the animals are bought they have their legs tied and are bundled into and on top of rickety old vehicles for the drive to their new home. I take a few photographs but folk are not too keen, and one lady takes issue and lobs a stone at me, albeit with a smile on her face. Abad offers her a sol which she refuses, but he explains how we are important people and how tourism brings jobs to the area, perhaps even their children, there now that's told you.
Abad is good company and gives us quite a lot of information, including as we pass through how ten years ago the mayor of Ilave was murdered by a group of the towns people because they violently disagreed with a speech he was making. He also shows us in one town the houses with no windows used to process cocaine brought in from Bolivia. Is there any effort to bring this trace to a halt, no he replies everyone gets their share including the police. He says that his father explains anyone would be stupid not to accept money from the cartels, and that he would if he were a policeman, it would risk his life and that of his family if they did not take the money, and certainly if they tried to blow the whistle.
The border is as you might imagine in the westerns, dusty, languid, and with menacing guards and policemen loitering about the place. We get stamped out of Peru, stroll under the large stone archway and get stamped into Bolivia with the obligatory photograph taken by a large Peruvian logo, and a giant can of Cusquena, the beer we have been drinking for the last two weeks, nice.
We are met by Ivar our guide for the next couple of days and are bundled into an old bus and ten minutes later we are in Copacabana, the Bolivian version. This is apparently a place of pilgrimage, and the large church does justice to that. The church is a Franciscan order but is a place where the synchronicity of Catholicism and the ancient Inca belief in Pacha Mama (Mother Earth, or the Virgin Mother) are deeply intertwined.
Copacabana is very much a backpacker town, and we stroll down to the hydrofoil that will take us on our second tour of the lake, having been pulled forward a day due to our plan to not stay on Sun Island. We join a group of Pakistani Americans from Chicago on a day trip from La Paz. It's a bumpy ride out to Isla de Sol today as the hydrofoil rises and battles with a choppy lake. We get a taste of the climbing we would have had to do as we reach the island and negotiate a lot of rocky steps up to our lunch stop. Quinoa vegetable soup and grilled trout, the staple diet in these parts, not as good as the Taquile Island version, is served up.
And now the slightly surreal part of the day, back to the hydrofoil for a wave bouncing trip in excess of two hours for a short visit to another floating reed island, just one, and in the words of Raul, the other group's guide, "a living museum", or as I might describe it, "another attempt to extort money from tourists". Still, true to form the US contingent spend a good deal of money on the colourful blankets and so it must have been a successful trip. We loiter around at the back and take a few photographs, and don't part with a single Boliviarino.
And so on to Huatajata, our new stop for the night. We wave the US group, farewell as they leave on their bus to La Paz, and we check in. As it suggested on Trip Advisor, there is no noticeable internet here, we're too far from civilisation. Another thing noticeably missing at this hotel is other guests, and it's only as we go up to our comfortable, warm room do we see that the delayed Mexican tourists are arriving and checking in.
An unexpected bonus are the visits to the natural remedy museum and the observatory. The former has been lovingly created in an adobe building by the tour company and as we get to the end we meet a real live practitioner who blesses the remainder of our journey, nice. The observatory is similarly carefully created and after the introductory video, and in the dark, the whole roof rolls back to reveal the sky, rather like being at the Millenium Stadium when it stops raining. Unfortunately tonight there is quite a bit of cloud and the southern cross is largely obscured. The observatory has a large telescope donated by the US Astronomical Society, and on the condition that it is used not just for visitors to the hotel, but also for the benefit of local people including school children, nice.
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