September 20, 2018 – September 24, 2018

We drove through some beautiful, rugged, rural landscapes towards the border with Bolivia and Lago Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world.  Lago Titicaca was extremely sacred to the Inca, and today remains sacred waters for many of the indigenous people of South America, as well, it would seem, for foreigners seeking alternatives to Western spirituality.

The border crossing from Peru into Bolivia was quick and easy, and we were greeted into Bolivia with friendly waves from locals walking along the highway.  The lakeside town of Copacabana is less than 20 km from the border, and we were soon set up to camp in the large grassy parking lot of Ecolodge Copacabana., right across the road from the lake and just a couple of kilometres from town along the beach.

If you are old enough, (or, if you have a passion for 70’s music), you may remember a hit by Barry Manilow where he sings about Copacabana.  This song got unmercifully stuck in our head for days.  The song actually has nothing to do with the small resort town on Lake Titicaca, but instead was inspired by a hotel named Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro….a little trivia there for you.

We enjoyed Copacabana, despite the slightly trashy beach and the touts constantly trying to get us to patronize the restaurants or take tours on the lake.

We climbed to the top of Cerro Calvary taking Piper along. With our help she seems to know how to both stand up to the numerous street dogs but without eliciting aggressive responses.  At the top we enjoyed the great views of the town and Lake Titicaca in the crisp, somewhat thin air.

We dined on lake trout.  We shopped in the market.   We sat in the town square.  We sipped beer as we watched the sun go down over the deep blue waters of the lake.

We decided to take a tour to visit Isla del Sol and Isla de la Luna, two sacred islands 20 or so kilometres off shore of Copacabana.  The full day tour was pretty cheap, only about $8 each, and Piper was allowed to join us!

Well, the boat ride to the islands was INCREDIBLY slow…we chugged along at a pace that would make amateur canoe paddlers embarrassed.  At one point, the engines cut out, and we bobbed in Lake Titicaca at the mercy of the small waves, the bow of the boat turning back towards Copacabana.  Minutes later, the operator had the engines operational again, and we continued on our way.

When we arrived at Isla de la Luna, we were told we had 35 minutes to visit the island (“Didn’t the guy who sold us the tickets tell us we would have an hour?”), 5 minutes of which was spent waiting to get off of the boat and up the docks.  It was a pretty cool archaeological site, but we really would have liked to have had time to climb to the viewpoint above the ruins.

Back on the boat, we slowly made our way over to Isla del Sol, where we were able to hike a few kilometres from another archaeological site along a high pathway to the main town on the island, Yumani.

Isla del Sol was very important to the Inca people.  They believed that the sun god was born here.  In addition, the first Inca ruler, Manco Capac, and his wife/sister are believed to have emerged directly from Lake Titicaca.  The creator gave Manco Capac a golden rod and told him to settle where the rod could be completely plunged into the earth…that location became Cusco.

In fact, Lake Titicaca, and Isla del Sol were important, sacred, inhabited locations long before the Inca people.  In the year 2000, a team of archaeologists discovered the ruins of a temple below the surface of Lake Titicaca, measuring 200 metres by 50 metres, that could be as much as 1,500 years old, and was likely built by the Tiwanaku people.

Another long, long boat ride, and we were back to the mainland,

At the copa (co) Copacabana 
The hottest spot north of Havana
At the copa (co) Copacabana
Music and passion were always the fashion
At the copa they fell in love….

Now it might be stuck in your head too!