On top of the world (La Paz and Isla del Sol, Bolivia)

From Sucre, I caught a flight to La Paz, choosing to save some time by getting the 40 minute flight north, avoiding what would have been a 12 hour bus ride on bumpy Bolivian roads. This also gave me the chance to fly in to La Paz airport, which is the world's highest international airport at 4061m. This was something of an experience as the thin air at this altitude means that the runway is two and a half time longer than a usual runway, and the aircraft have to use their reserve thrusters in order to slow down as there isn't enough resistance in the air to slow a plane down normally. The landing was therefore a little unusual as we approached the runway at a strange angle and you could feel the aircraft fighting to slow down as quickly as possible.

My plane to take me from Sucre to La Paz

View of the Bolivian hills from the plane

I then spent the next couple of days exploring La Paz, an extraordinary city due to its high altitude and spectacular location straddling a bowl-like valley with thousands of houses perched on the hillsides around. La Paz (or to give it its full name 'La Ciudad de Nuestra Senora de la Paz) is a bustling, noisy city which is home to more than a million people. Although Sucre is actually Bolivia's official capital, La Paz is the home of the Bolivian government and so often defined as the world's highest captial city.

La Paz

La Paz

As I had done in Santiago and Valparaiso, I joined a free walking tour to get a sense of the city from a local, which again proved very interesting as our guide talked us through some of the more turbulent moments in Bolivian history, many of which seemed to have occurred in and around La Paz's main square, Plaza Murillo. Although I was only able to spend a couple of days in the city, I found it a really exciting, vibrant place, and despite it slightly dodgy reputation for tourist scams I didn't encounter any problems. I did however have my bank card swallowed by an ATM just outside my hostel which slightly took the gloss off things!

Plaza San Francisco and Iglesia San Francisco

Bolivian Senate building, Plaza Murillo

Typical La Paz shop

Llama foetus anyone?

After three nights in the city (the rest of my time in La Paz is recounted here), I headed further north to the small town of Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca (not to be confused with Copacabana beach in Brazil which actually takes its name from its Bolivian namesake). The bus journey from La Paz to Copacabana involved crossing a small section of the lake, which meant getting off the bus to board a smaller boat, while the bus itself was carefully driven on to a barge for the ten minute crossing to the other side.

Crossing Lake Titicaca on the way to Copacabana

Our bus crossing separately

Lake Titicaca is the world's highest navegable lake at 3800m, and at over 8000 square kilometres is also one of the largest lakes in the world. I had therefore come to Copacabana in order to get close to the lake and to visit the largest of the 40 islands within the lake, Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun). Isla del Sol was of tremendous importance to the Incas, who believed that the creator god Viracocha rose from the waters of Lake Titicaca to create the sun and the moon. It therefore contains a number of interesting Inca sites and has long been a place of pilgrimage.

After an afternoon spent wandering around Copacabana and a suprisingly good night's sleep in the cheapest hostel of my trip so far (20 bolivianos for a room to myself, which equates to just under two pounds!), I caught a boat to Isla del Sol the following morning. While I could have joined an organised one or two day tour of the island, I chose to take a more independent approach and head to the island on my own, which meant just turning up on the island and finding a hostel once I got there, pushing me out of my comfort zone and my reliance on the Rough Guide and hostelbookers.com!

Lake Titicaca

Copacabana

Moorish cathedral in Copacabana

The boat ride to the island took around an hour and a half, more because of the captain's desire to save fuel, rather than the distance between the mainland and the island, but we were kept entertained by a guide who explained the history and culture of Isla del Sol to us and then played a few Bolivian songs to us. Once I arrived at the island, I walked up the steep steps from the port to the small hamlet of Yumani, one of three communities that make up the island, where I soon found a hostel that could offer me a nice room for only 40 bolivianos.

Heading towards Isla del Sol

View across Lake Titicaca and to the mountains beyond from my hostel balcony

Leaving my large bag at the hostel, I set off for a day's walking around the island along the two paths which run from south to north, one along the eastern coast (which I followed in the morning) and the other which followed the original trail laid out by the Incas hundreds of years ago (which I followed in the afternoon). As the island has no roads (and therefore no cars), it was a wonderfully tranquil place to walk for a day, particularly with the spectacular surroundings of the lake and a number of small rural communities to pass through. The photos below give a good flavour of what I saw during my day's walking...

The morning trail

A woman herding cows, sheep and pigs!

Ch'alla, the second of the three communities

Ch'allapampa, the third community

After stopping for lunch in Ch'allapampa, I headed to the very northern tip of the island to visit the ruins of Chincana, an Inca complex which was built close to the sacred rock where Viracocha was believed to have created the sun and the moon. Although not as large as some of the Inca sites I would get to see a week or so later in Peru, this was nevertheless an impressive set of rooms and passageways in a spectacular location overlooking the lake.

The ruined Inca complex of Chincana

I then headed back towards the south of the island following the original Inca trail across the centre of the island, which at times reached altitudes of 3800m, making for strenuous walking in the hot sun. On passing through each of the three communities in the morning, I had had to pay a small charge to walk across their land, for which I received an elaborately decorated ticket, which I then needed to show again at a series of makeshift checkpoints as I crossed back through each community. In all I think I was stopped seven times to either buy or show a ticket!

The original Inca trail across the middle of the island

After a total of about six hours walking, I returned to my hostel in Yumani in late afternoon, after a rewarding day's walking across this beautiful island. I had passed through a number of interesting communities, seen cows, sheep, donkeys, pigs, cats, dogs and llamas along the way, and had my first sight of the traditional Inca form of farming where crops are grown on steep terraces. After relaxing for a couple of hours, I made it back to the top of the island just in time to see the sun setting over the lake, a stunning sight as the light reflected off the lake and the low clouds just above it. 

Sunset over Lake Titicaca

Inspired by the wonderful sunset, I got up at 6am the next morning to watch the sun rise over the opposite side of the lake, the position of my hostel balcony meaning I could watch it only a few metres from my room. Again the changing colours as the sun rose were quite breathtaking and made the early start more than worthwhile.

Sunrise over Lake Titicaca the next morning

I then caught a boat back to Copacabana, and arrived back in town to be greeted by the sights and sounds of a parade that seemed to have brought the whole town out to watch, along with a number of slightly bemused tourists. On asking a local what was being celebrated, I was informed that it was an anniversary of one of the battles of the War of the Pacific in the late nineteenth century, a war which resulted in Bolivia losing its Pacific coastline to Chile. A banner decrying 134 years of Chilean ignomy for their seizure of Bolivian lands suggested that this was more a show of defiance than a celebration, but the atmosphere seemed cheerful enough as local schoolchildren and representatives of various local trades and business associations marched past the assembled dignatries.

After passing the rest of the afternoon in Copacabana, I caught an overnight bus to Cusco in Peru, where I would be meeting my friend Chris in a couple of days. After only eleven days it was time to leave Bolivia, a country that had surprised me with the diversity of its landscapes, its friendly people and its fantastically cheap food and accommodation - so definitely somewhere I would like to go back to one day...