A Website All About Jo

Lake Titicaca

Wednesday 4th December 2002
Well the original plan was that when we arrived in Puno I´d get on a bus to COpacobana and meet Judith there. Unfortunately the buses to COpacobana only leave in the morning and we arrived after they´d left. I therefore made the executive decision to stay and travel with Emma and Ray and catch up with Judith later.
We weren´t totally impressed with Puno but we´d been told the islands were good so decided to go to the port in the morning and get on a boat . In the meantime we had to amuse ourselves so had a very nice lunch in an empty restaurant where the waiter obviously wasnpt paid enough as at the end he told us about 3 times that service wasn´t included but as the service was crap we gave him the fake money we had.
After a short break in our hotel we went in search of more food to relieve our boredom (Emma and Ray are Hobbits, and I think I´ve become one too) and ended up with cake and hot chocolate in a cafe for an hour or so until it was time for bed.

The next day we got ourselves on a boat heading out for a day trip to a few islands. Our first stop was one of the Uros floating islands which was wierd as the ground is all squishy and it is literally just a load of reeds squashed together. We then got on a reed boat to another island nearby where there was a school which seemed much more permanent than the rest of the islands which have to be rebuilt every so often and can be towed to different locations if desired (a bit confusing if you´re drunk I imagine).
The next leg of our journey took us to the island of Tequile, this was a 2 1/2 hour journey during which time we got to know some of our fellow passengers including a bloke from Bristol who was 21 going on 50 who felt the need to ask us how much we´d paid for everything we´d done and then tell us he´d paid less, very annoying especially as he seemed to think he´d done everything better aswell. We named him Steve the Pixie due to his silly hat.

We eventually arrived on the Island of Taquile where you can tell if a man is single or not by the colour of his hat! Married men wear Red hats and single men red and white hats. Practically every man you see is knitting a hat which I assume is sold to tourists unless they change theirs regularly. We walked across the island to the main square, Lake Titicaca is so huge that you get the feeling you're actually standing on the edge of an ocean even though you're at 38000m as you can hardly see any land. In the main square the town council were addressing the people who were sitting around the square, it was all it Quechua though so I have no idea what it was all about.

After a picnic lunch of food we’d bought with us (including a pineapple which seemed a good idea at the time but turned out to be a bit messy) we got back in the boat for our return journey. The first part of the journey was a little rough as the wind had picked up but Puno is in a small bay so I assumed that once we got inside that things would calm down a bit. Unfortunately I was wrong and we hit a huge storm in the bay and lost pretty much all visibility except that we could see the lightning hitting the water up ahead! We had decided not to worry unless the drivers or guide looked worry and at this point they started to panic. They were navigating by the peninsulas behind us and trying to fill up with petrol at the same time. In order to do this though they had to let the crap driver steer the boat which made the situation worse as he was causing the boat to tip more than felt safe. Luckily the other guy took over and after a scary 20 minutes they finally spotted the lights for the channel and we found calmer waters. At this point we noticed that the English couple opposite us had undone their shoelaces just in case we had to do any swimming! This made us feel better about being scared.

Everyone was glad when we reached the shore even though it was chucking down with rain in Puno. We then went and booked our bus to Copacobana and then went to a posh pizza restaurant with another guy from the trip. The restaurant was so posh that the waiter asked where we were from and then produced a little British flag for our table – very cute. We then calmed our nerves with some sangria and pizzas.
The next day we had yet another early bus trip, this time to Copacobana. I was a bit worried at one point as I thought I’d lost my tourist pass for Peru which would have made it a bit difficult to leave the country but luckily I’d filed it safely in my big rucksack under lots of other things.
The border crossing involved lots of standing in queues and much stamping of passports but didn’t take too long and soon we were back on the bus and 15 minutes later were in Copacobana.

We found ourselves a nice hotel with hot showers for £1 a night and then went out to organise a tour to the Isla del Sol for the next day and bus tickets to La Paz for the day after. We managed both of these things without too much stress and then sat about amusing ourselves for the rest of the day. Our first activity involved hiring a pedlo and messing about in that for ½ hour after which we were a bit bored so went back to dry land. The rest of the day was spent eating shopping and generally chilling out.
In the evening we decided we just wanted to sit in a nice café and have a drink and some cake, something we thought wouldn’t be too tricky but 3 restaurants later when we finally found somewhere with snacks we were too tired and cold to really relax so we just went to bed (after a cake of course).

The boat trip to Isla del Sol was at 8:30 the next morning and it took a couple of hours to get to the North of the island where we got off and started our walk to the south. It was raining heavily at first and we wondered what we were doing but it soon cleared up and we felt like we were somewhere tropical as the views from the top of the island were spectacular. Our walk to the south took us about 3 hours and was pretty tiring. We were inending to spend the night on the island but reached the south in time for the return boat so we decided to head back to hot showers and a wide choice of restaurants.
On the boat back we met another guy from Bristol who was just as dull as Steve the Pixie so we now have a very low opinion of Bristol men. I also bumped into a guy who was in my class in Cusco – Keith – who recommended a good restaurant in Copacobana where we all went later that evening. It was run by a German guy and his wife and the food was fantastic, we all felt a bit overstuffed at the end of it.
The following day involved packing and shopping before heading off to La Paz. This journey involved crossing the lake at one point so we all had to get off the bus and get into a little boat while the bus went across on something else - didn't look very stable but made it.