Lake Titcaca is apparently one of the highest navigable lakes in the world, and it's the biggest in south america. I am not surprised, since everything in Bolivia is the highest something in the world since we're so high past sea level (the lake is past 12,000ft, btw). We grabbed a bus to Copacabana and were unfortunately seated next to a family of 3 that included a 30-something year old son (at least that's how old he looked) who basically tried to hit on me the entire 7 hour bus ride even though he was sitting right by his parents. Not cool. I had to ask him a few times to stop saying he couldn't speak around me bc he got too flustered bc my eyes were so pretty (umm, they're just brown), and then I resorted to just putting my headphones in since my friends weren't doing much but laughing when they could get away with it. You would think that the headphones would be a deterrent to the guy, but nope. He pretty much tapped me to try to talk to me or "help" me with my spanish every 5 minutes, and despite the annoyed look I had on my face while I insisted that I didn't need his help, he still tapped me and tried to talk to me the entire bus ride. Torturous.
After arriving to Copacabana and escaping our new "friend", we checked into our hotel and decided to take a walk around the town. After catching up with some people we ran into that we had traveled with on the Salt Flats, we decided to climb up a ridiculously steep mountain to watch the sunset over the lake. The bad part about that decision was that Scotty and I had just wolfed down a pizza together in less than 10 minutes so we could see the sunset, and while we were climbing this vertical mountain face, my stomach did not appreciate the lack of rest and digest time. I stopped 3/4 of the way up and watched the sunset from my own rock, while the others went up another 200 or so meters.
Next day, we headed to Isla de Sol, birthplace of the Incas..at least that is what they believe. We spent the day hiking from one end of the island to the other, and along the way, we met fake toll collector people who were trying to tell us we had to pay to walk down the section of the trail. Umm where did we miss the park entree fee signs? Oh wait, there weren't any. We had one woman go as far as running after us for at least 100m after we hopped the fence next to her gate and walked past her without paying, and she grabbed my arm to get me to stop walking...so not cool. Basically after all was said and done, and none from my group paid, each of us would have had to pay an additional $50 bolivianos just to walk from one end of the island to the other. I only brought $14 with me.
Puno: Home to the floating islands
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| El Presidente |
Puno is pretty much a dump. Okay, that was a little blunt, but the city doesn't have a whole lot going for it. The main attraction there is heading out onto the lake to visit the floating reed islands that the Uro people have built and live on. They are made out of hollow reeds that grow on the lake and people literally make their houses, kitchens, beds, mattresses, and boats out of these reeds and then they live on the lake. Pretty amazing work putting the islands together. It's a weird sensation to walk on the islands...kinda like being on a waterbed except more stable than that although you know that there is at least 16 or 17 ft of water underneath you if for some reason you step somewhere where the reed would not hold you. There are 60 floating islands, each with their own president. We took a boat to one of the islands and got a "tour" where we saw how the islands were actually made, we got tours of the homes (which only had one bed and some sitting space on the floor), and got a chance to help out the island dwellers by purchasing some of their handmade artisan crafts. Pretty wild experience since I never expected anyone to be living on the water like this. They even have boats that act like grocery stores that zip around to the different islands to sell stuff.
Puno was my last stop with Candace, Scotty, and Chris, so we spent our last night fulfilling a 1.5 month goal of finding a karaoke bar and singing the night away. I actually only sang once..TLC waterfalls was the choice for me, but it was a lot harder than I thought since I forgot about the rapping part. A good night overall though. We had the entire day to hang out before our respective buses (mine to Cusco, theirs to Arequipa) so we walked around, and Scott and I randomly found a lookout point right next to our hostel. We also saw about 50 girls there practicing some sort of hula hoop and poms number for a school competition. We ended up hanging out their and attempting to speak to 11 and 12 year old girls about what they were doing and where we were from for the next 2 hours while they practiced their dances. Unfortunately Scotty and I are terrible at speaking spanish, but luckily those little girls were learning english so we could mostly figure out what the other person was saying. The best part: the screams of surprise and shock and the giggles when we told them how old we were. I never used to feel old, but they made me feel it that day...haha. Lucky for me, Scott is older than me, so his age was an even bigger deal.
I said my goodbyes to my friends at the bus station that night. A sad moment. I was traveling with them for over a month, and I don't think I even remember how to make friends anymore..haha. No really, it was so nice to meet such wonderful people and to be able to travel with them and get to know them for so long was really great. I didn't expect for something like that to happen, especially after the fallout with the idiot irish girl, so I'm really happy things worked out in my favor. I really hope we can visit each other in the near future..two friends will be in London and that's only 6 hours from nyc. :)
Only two more days until Nina gets to South America. I'm pretty excited! It should be an interesting first vacation together!
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