The view of Lake Titicaca after the all-night bus trip. It was pretty disorienting but at least I got this lovely sunrise picture, even though its a bit off-center (hey, it was 5am!)
There isn't much of a beach at Copacabana but there are a bunch of colorful paddle boats.
View of Copacabana from the paddleboat. There isn't much except some hotels and trout restaurants.
Amber, me and Victoria post-paddleboat.
Amber and I climbed the nearby hill to see some religious statues there. We happened to be in Copa during the Festival of Little Things where people bring minatures of cars, houses, baggage, etc to the top to be blessed for the coming year.
Little things to be blessed.
The next day, Amber and I went up to the Isla del Sol. It had been raining that morning so we decided to go to the island in the afternoon. Too bad the boat took about an hour and a half to get there (sooooooo slooooooowwwww) so we actually only ended up having about an hour on the actual island. We scrambled up as high as we could to get some photos but we didn't have time for much else. In any case, the boat ride was lovely.
View of the lake from Isla del Sol.
Caught an old women in traditional dress. They are very superstitious about photos but I wanted to show everyone how they dress. I didn't steal her soul, I promise!
Some guys paddling through the lake. We were probably moving at the same speed in our motorized one. We were actually told to sit as far forward in the boat as possible to make it go faster.
We also ran into a couple of people, Jacklyn and Shane, who did the Inca Trail with me. We decided to meet for dinner but because things run so haphazardly in Copa, we went to the one restaurant that was open. It was packed (as the only one open) but there was only one waiter on duty. So we were patient, waiting to order, waiting to get our drinks and waiting for our food. Its amazing how slowly things can run in Copacabana. Its like they didn't want our money! When we finally got our food, it was horrible. Soup that tasted it came out of a can and pasta that tasted old and packagy. The only good thing was the trout but since they were serving it all over the place, they really couldn't have messed it up. We had a good laugh but it was disappointing after eating so well thus far. But I still enjoyed my time in Copa and would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Bolivia.
It turned out that Amber and I had similar travel plans so we decided to travel together through Bolivia and parts of Argentina. It works out so well since we can share hotel rooms and just keep an eye out for each other. Not as many people speak English in Bolivia so it helps to have a travel buddy. We won't actually be spending too much time traveling on our own since we are hooking up with 2 tour groups while in Bolivia. The first is in the jungle, which will be a 5-day tour through the Amazon and the Pampas. We'll see bugs, rain, bugs and more bugs!! But we will also see pink dolphins, which I'm excited about. The other tour will be through the salt plains but we haven't finalized plans yet.
We are currently in La Paz, which doesn't have much to recommend it except it has EXTENSIVE markets, including a huge black market. We did a bunch of shopping and now I have a big package that I'm going to be sending home so Mom, you'll be able to see what I've been up to! I would have taken more pictures of the markets but Bolivians are more sensitive to photography, which is pretty understandable. The markets sell everything imaginable from food, lamps, DVD players, knock-off clothes, you name it. Insane.
Really, the city is pretty dirty and ugly but it is the highest city in the world (4,500m)!
I took a sneaky picture of the markets and its of the traditional women skirts.
I even got a picture of the Witch's Market. If you look closely, you can see some llama baby skeletons with dried fur on them. Gross!
We're heading up to Rurrenabaque tomorrow for our jungle tour so my next post will be after that. I'm sure the most I will have to report will be the insane number of bug bites I will get but thankfully I have a bunch of malaria pills to get me through it! Thank god for vaccinations!
No comments:
Post a Comment