Alojamiento Emperador Calle Murillo 235, 15 bolivianos (this place is clean with hot showers, but do not leave money, passport, etc in the room... we think they have sticky fingers and you might end up with a fake bill or two.)At 3800m above sea level, we panted and wondered why we decided to save the 50 cents and hump our backpacks to the hostal. We´re still getting used to the exchange rate and the ridiculously high altitude.
We realized right away that Copacabana was NOT the Copacabana with Lola the showgirl, nor was it the hottest place north of Havana. It is actually its much colder, more laid back and similarly named twin. Did I mention it was cold? But still, we enjoyed this little hole in the wall place.
In Copacabana, it was just a normal day, as one señora explained to us. Everyday is just a normal day with colorful blessings of cars at 11am in the church square (new cars off to La Paz, Bolivia) and people who won´t sell you half a block of cheese... or really anything! They only sell these massive hunks of cheese. Are we seriously the only ones who don´t want enough cheese for 40 people?
Customer service was, at it´s best, iffy and unfriendly. My saying about Ecuador stands true here. The customer is always wrong.Copacabana is famous for Lake Titicaca (heehee... you know you want to chuckle a little) Titi in Aymara (an Inca language) means cat. And caca... well, no one really explained it to us. It can´t possibly mean cat poop :)
Lake Titicaca is where the Incas began. Supposedly, an Inca God and the first Incas, Manco Capac and Mama Huaca, mystically appeared out of the lake. And thus beings the legend of the Incas. It is a huge, amazing and beautiful lake (and cold... did I mention that yet?)
There are two islands in the lake, The Isla del Sol (The Island of the Sun) and The Isla de la Luna (The Island of the Moon). The Isla del Sol has about 5000 pretty much self sufficient people living on it. The Isla de la Luna is much smaller, less visited and I don´t think anyone lives there.We took a boat ride and visited The Isla del Sol (despite the freezing rain. Of course, Copacabana has beautiful weather 10 months out of the year. Guess which two months are rainy? :) We visited (more) Inca ruins, saw where a temple existed in Lake Titicaca but as the lake rose, it was eventually swallowed up and finally, we took what should be a 3 hour hike in 2.5 brisk, sweaty, sun baked hours from the north end of the island to the south end. It was absolutely gorgeous! It was a fabulous way to get away from civilization and begin my week of birthday celebrations!
The last part of our Lake Titicaca tour, we visited mini floating islands. The floating islands are communities that were created hundreds of years ago for people to avoid the war hungry Incas and Collas. The islands are made of reeds called totora from the lake. Hundreds and hundreds of thick layers of reeds create these floating islands. They are able to support communities of people. Pretty impressive! We only saw little mini replicas, but on the Peru side of the lake (Lake Titicaca is split between Bolivia and Peru) the islands support hundreds of Uros people. Everything is made of these reeds: houses, churches, boats, food (no... kidding.) The mini´s were pretty cool, I´m sure the giant ones are a triple wow!Thanks Lonely Planet for the technical information in this blog entry.
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