Into Bolivia and Lake Titicaca

Just woken, we jumped off our comfortable night bus close to the Lake Titicaca border between Peru and Bolivia and, glancing up and down the semi-deserted road, swung the backpacks on from the luggage rack. 'De donde tomamos el bus?' we asked the conductor in our pidgin Spanish, who gestured at a cheerful matronly lady nearby, 'La senora'. Uh-huh, I thought dubiously as we followed her to a white minibus, or collectivo, with a young Spanish woman from our bus. And as we settled into our seats it emerged that yes indeed, if we wanted to go now to the border rather than wait around for an indeterminate amount of time for a bus which may or may not exist (this was left a little unclear), it would be 5 soles each. But surely not, Senora, we explained, for we have purchased tickets all the way from Cusco to Copacabana. Directo. In fact, the on the very same bus, we had originally been assured. Ah yes but this was a private vehicle, she explained regretfully in return, and therefore the driver needed payment. Mmm-hmmm, we agreed, quite the predicament - but see we have already paid the bus company for a direct ticket all the way to Copacabana, the closest town to the Bolivian side. Yes, she understood, but this was only 5 soles and it was a private vehicle after all, you see. Our Spanish associate took on the lion's share of the argument; her 'Not our problem' line of reasoning growing more exasperated and rapido by the second. 

Copacabana harbour

Eventually we succumbed, as one always does when tossed off a night bus before 8am in a far-flung corner of the world to find someone in a taxi requiring more money than expected to whisk you off to the nearest bastion of civilisation. And to be fair, the cost itself was nothing, and if the good lady was attempting to make anything out of the exchange she certainly wasn't charging a fraction of what she ought to have been. Annoyingly, I can't even remember the name of the bus company, who are predictably pulling a fast one on this score by mis-marketing as a direct route to Copacabana one that is actually simply a bus to La Paz which will dump you reasonably close to the Peruvian side of the border. Much like many others I'm sure and by no means the worst of travel predicaments in which one may find oneself. But suffice it to say, exercise caution with cross-border buses, kids, there is almost always a catch, be it delays, scams or appalling currency exchange rates...

Bolivian ladies rule the world

Lake Titicaca is one of those exotic destinations that tend to sound fictional. Like Timbuktu or Mombasa. As the world's highest altitude lake, I had somehow imagined a desolate, lunar Ladakhian place, one cold and windswept where the living is hard. While the latter is almost certainly true, if alleviated in some areas since the tourist trail caught on, the former characteristics couldn't be further from the truth. Over the border - a couple of semi-deserted police stations and passport stamping offices interspersed with exchange booths and small shops, much more your India-Nepal crossing (minus all the people) than your Argentina-Chile - we sat in a small collectivo waiting for our journey into town. Bit by bit, the bus filled up with wizened old Bolivian ladies in tall bowler hats and huge colourful bundles of groceries or goods for sale tied across their shoulders, as the driver sat outside with his friends finishing some breakfast until he had enough customers to make the 3 Bolviano pp journey worth it's gas. 

Copacabana cathedral

As we barrelled bumpily into town the lake started to sweep tantalisingly into and out of view. A bright, deep blue, with mountains still visible far into the distance, green and brown rolling hills surrounding: your only clue to its crazy 3800m altitude the cool, foreshortened feeling in your lungs that accompanies the traveller around the altiplano. Copacabana is an engaging little town, now very adapted to its tourist profile - which leans decidedly towards the backpacker due to its remote location but is nevertheless visible on every street. Andean knitwear abounds in quantities and affordability far exceeding those we'd seen in Peru, and rough and ready tourist restaurants (ever amusingly billed as serving 'typical food') dot several of the main thoroughfares in town and the lakeside. Yet it still feels quite small and sleepy, and it was easy to see why so many hippy travellers end up pitching up for a while, selling jewellery on street corners and stoning a few months away by its beautiful wooded lakeside.

Seafood stalls dot the shore and there are little peddle-boats for rent, along with the ubiquitous daily boat-trips out to the Isla del Sol just a few hours away. Copacabana would have an almost alpine flavour, with its gentle hills and the deep blue greens of the lake, if not for remaining so utterly and distinctly Bolivian. For just as we'd felt the click into Peru from Chile, the countries again shifted into place for us with the journey into Bolivia. I felt things slow down a little further, as clearly as the prices dropped a smidgen further. One of the poorest countries on the continent - and notable for its political instability even in the South American context - Bolivia has a very distinct cultural richness, sense of identity and pace. 

Lake Titicaca from the Inca clock

Rush hour at Vicky's carniceria

Almost literally with the border crossing, too, the hats appeared. Of course they are all over the place in Peru too, the Andean altiplano essentially being a shared cross-border culture, but not like this. On men and on children, but above all on the women, they are a glory to behold. Tall, tiny bowler hats perched atop waist-length jet black hair worn in two long plaits laced together at the bottom with woolen tassels  The women in general, in fact, may have been the most notable emblem of Bolivia for us: stout, matronly ladies as wide as they are tall, sat stately and authoritatively in shops, guesthouses and behind little butcher's counters surrounded by huge hanging carcasses, which they'd swing heavily down with no regard for lost fingers or basic hygiene to chop off cuts with huge metal cleavers. Even from a cursory stroll around Copacabana's marketplace or the souvenir stands fronting the huge, eerie cathedral (arrestingly medieval and bare both outside and in, where two small boys messed around in a dark wax-encrusted side chapel with nothing but a terrifying Virgin figurine at it head), it was clear that the Cholitas rule the roost.

Car in hat!

Dried llama, anyone?

We took the ferry out to the Isla del Sol, mythological birthplace of the Incas, for an overnight stay. You can buy tickets all over town for either of the two daily crossings and from the ubiquity of the tickets in our first few days I had expected the small island, hikeable top to toe within a long morning, to be rammed with tourists. Disembarking in tiny Cha'llapampa mid-afternoon, this appeared far from the case until we wandered through the small village - still virtually undeveloped, with small-scale extensions to family homes and kitchen-adjacent little 'shops' springing up to capitalise on all the strange grubby backpackers descending daily - to hit the beach on the other aide. For 10 Bolivianos you can pitch your tent here, we realised, smacking our foreheads for not bringing our own along and a tourist shanty-town of 30-40 tents was camped out on the sandy shoreline, ringed by bemused islanders who kept little shop tables nearby set up with water, wine, beer and biscuits with which to woo the foreigners. What-evs, we said sniffily, picking out a room in a little guestblock nearby. More money into the local economy, we congratulated ourselves airily, handing over eight times the sum to a chirpy septuagenarian who, fair to say, had seen much harder years here on the Island of the Sun.

Cha'llapampa on the Isla del Sol

It was a truly beautiful place, with deep turquoise waters giving way to deeper blues and distant islands which seem from a distance to float on the horizon. Well-cultivated gardens, quinoa fields and flower patches spill out over pretty, domesticated hills and ridges, with mules and goats tethered to tiny cottage fences. We hiked up to the Chincana ruins on the headpoint, wandering among the Incan sites, where it is all supposed to have begun. The modest charms, spectacular though the view, of the ruins compared with those on the Inca trail a week or so earlier couldn't help but raise the question of why the great kings wouldn't have lavished greater resources and attention up here at the site of their origin - and we thought of our guide Ramiro's ruminations that the creation myth was more a political sop to bring the eastern reaches of empire into line than a national history. Nonetheless, standing along the spine of the captivating little island towards sunset, it's not so difficult to see why the Sun God would have come into being here. 

Titicaca from the hilltops of Isla del Sol

A bottle of Bolivia's finest on the beach

Returning to the village, we bought crackers and a bottle of 28 Boliviano (less than 2.60) wine and cheese puffs and drank it on the beach before lying on our backs staring up at a crazy bright starscape while nattering amiable nonsense about the size of the universe, general feasibility of God and literary stylings of Christopher Hitchens. T had the Titicaca speciality of lake trout with mustard and I had the big veggie salad at one of the two tiny family restaurants before we headed to bed to get ready for an early start. The next morning we rose to pouring rain and overcast skies but hit the trail by 9 to hike across the spine of the island to the southernmost settlement of Yumani in time for the 1.30 ferry. The landscapes evoke a south-east European pre-war era, all small-holdings and bushy green-brown scrubbed hills above chilly green-blue seas. We'd past the worst of the rain by 11am but still had the trail almost completely to ourselves. Halfway across, we stopped for an ancient, hardy old man sheltering from the wind and rain by a small wall on the open ridge - there was a 15 Boliviano toll or ticket for the 'Sacred road'. Adding it to our ticket from the ruin complex we'd come from, necessary to access the trail, we reasoned that the community of Challa halfway along the Island had to toll for something; with boats coming into either end of the island and both port villages able to charge an 'entry/exit' fee, they must feel somewhat bypassed by the boomtimes. After a gorgeous 3-4 hour walk we descended into the metropolis of quiet little Yumani, the island's biggest settlement. A small boy of perhaps 7 or 8 stepped out, both authoritatively and uncertainly, to level the village entry charge as we approached. Peering up at us he assumed an expression of gravity beyond his years and a mildly belligerent posture in the middle of the narrow path; all too aware that most of his clientele would merely have to step straight past him, failing to recognise his authority in matters tolling. Were we getting the 1.30 ferry, he inquired? Ok, go, he assented gravely, waving us through and stepping aside.

Back in Copacabana we climbed the hill to the old Incan clock where a girl not much older materialised from nowhere to collect her entry fee to the ancient rocks, inspecting the notes carefully and professionally for fakes. Ah, child labour; for all the mildness of its expression here, truly back in force for the first time since India. The climb, like that on the Island, left us pausing for breath every 5 minutes and wondering why, after all our hiking and the challenges of the trail only a week before, did this crap not get any easier?? But the view rewarded amply, again taking us aback with its accessible prettiness, its gorgeous Mediterranean light and calm waters. We developed a taste for Pacena beer, T ate more trout and we watched sunset from the harbour. We found US sitcom repeats on a cable channel, wandered around the cathedral and people-watched from little coffee-shops where the service required ordering at least half an hour before hunger or thirst descended. And we developed a growing affection for this mysterious, land-locked, wild and be-hatted Andean land.

But now, we realised, we were staring down the barrel of our last month in South America, which provoked an odd combination of mild panic and travel fatigue, particularly as we were now down to the great Salar de Uyuni as the sole 'must-see' left on our list. Deep breaths, all will be well. 

Copacabana harbour at sunset

After 3 meandering days, we checked out of the pleasant little guesthouse it had taken us and the Spanish girl from the bus about 2 hours to find (despite parting ways almost immediately after checking in, we had somewhow all felt obligated to each other after the border crossing tribulations and proceded to tramp about town together dismissing guesthouses that were insifficiently cheap, clean or appropriately spaced for all three of us) and pointed ourselves towards the the big smoke. Our 3 hour bus became a 6 hour bus due to a road strike just beyond the boat crossing at San Pedro de Titicaca (Buses carried across on tiny boats! A pretty wonderful sight I can assure you). This was a common problem, explained an older Englishwoman onboard who had been living in Bolivia for some years: workers with grievances to highlight to the authorities barricaded the road in person, allowing only small vehicles through but no tourist carriers. It was effective, she said, but it did make travel time-consuming. Never the strike-breakers, we settled down to wait on the hillside in the large crowd of held-up tourists, commuters and protesters. Eventually as evening approached, we left the cool, calm shores and slow living of Lake Titicaca behind us, winding through the crammed, precipitous outerburbs of El Alto and on down the valley to La Paz.