Arequipa, Puno & Copacabana....

I wont say much about Arequipa as I am going back there in July. It is very colourful, like Balamory squared. The Plaza de Armas is huge and a great place to get a beer and watch the sun go down. Puno was our next destination on the shores of Lake Titicaca (the highest lake in the world).

Puno is cold. Puno is cold. Puno is cold. The bus winds down into the town from the hills and first impressions of the place are the same as a lot of peruvian towns, permenant building sites. I hate being a gingo in places like these because you get attacked in bus stations by everyone in town...trying to sell you something, buy something from you or just stare at you. We saw another parade in Puno, Peruvians seem very proud although they never make it clear what they are proud of. We spent the evening shivering in our hostel watching pirate dvds and eating bread from the market. We only really intended Puno to be a stop off for the lake on the Bolivian side.

The next morning we caught a local bus to Copacabana, Bolivia. This was where we could catch our boat out to the Isla del Sol, birthplace of the first Inca. Crossing the border into Bolivia is dead easy, they waste so much ink stamping your passport 7 times, especially seeing as you can easily just walk across the border without anyone noticing. As tempting as it was to become an illegal immigrant kicking it in Bolivia, I needed those stamps in my passport allowing me to stay in Peru until my flight home.

Guess what we ran into 5m into the Bolivian border....another parade, except this one was in the road, the only road, the only road into Bolivia, THE ONLY ROAD INTO BOLIVIA. Luckily after 20 minutes of driving at 0.8mph the parade buggered off down a side alley. After paying the 1 Boliviano (about 8p) entrance tax we were finally allowed into Copacabana. Copacabana is lovely if you like dreadlocks, being ripped off and crack. However the harbour is a good place to get a boat to the Isla del Sol. Myself and Stefan rented a kayak on Lake Titicaca, we owned the lake for all of half an hour.

After a day bumming around in Copacabana we headed for the Isla del Sol a 1.5 hour boat journey away. We intended to stay the night on the Island but we had very little money as there were no atms after Puno. We got dumped on the north side of the island and the idea is you trek the 3 hours to the south of the island and either stay over or get the boat back. We bought all of our stuff with us which resulted in a 3hour trek with 12kg on our backs in the scorcing heat 3800m above sea level. apparently Í´ve run out of space, stupid blog...




P.