From Cusco to La Paz, via Lake Titicaca

Unsurprisingly worse for wear after the trek to Machu Picchu, I was just happy I didn’t have to climb any mountains for the first time in a week.

I would also have been quite happy to avoid the cuba libres for a while, but unfortunately, with new trek group friends and having run into a couple we’d first met in Ecuador, we ended up going straight to the pub (the Cross Keys had surprisingly good pisco sours), and then a beer festival the following night.

Am finding this sudden social life a bit strange. But we really enjoyed Cusco, and were dreading having to get back on track with the itinerary (and more long-distance buses) so, many drunken nights later…

OK, we weren’t all that bad 🙂 On one day, we were even diligent enough tourists to go walking to some of the Inca ruins around the city (seemingly unnecessarily many, but I suppose at one time it was the capital of their empire).

Started off later than planned, unfortunately, due to omnipresent hangover, but felt rather virtuous as we admired the jagged walls of a fortress apparently designed to resemble puma teeth (honestly, those Inca architects), and a large rock designed to resemble a large rock.

Buoyed up by our touristy achievements, we wandered on along uphill roads (possibly over-confident after trekking the Andes for five days?), until a police car pulled up alongside us, shouting through their window about where on earth we thought we were going. Or so I thought at least.

As I watched Rich clamber into the backseat of the car, I figured we were either in worse trouble than I realised, or it really was just an excessively friendly policeman assuming no one would choose to walk that road, and helping out the naive gringos.

Fortunately I think it was the latter. So we thanked him (profusely, once we saw how far, and how uphill, it was to the next ruin), admired the ruin, and proceeded to fail dismally in attempting to take a taxi back to town. At which point we were attacked by dogs.

They chased and barked but thankfully didn’t bite – we emerged unscathed, albeit with a newfound terror of dogs, and finally had to admit it was time to leave Cusco.

So, as the gringo trail goes, we made for the Bolivian border. And Lake Titicaca, which, even at dawn on a freezing morning halfway through thirteen hours on a bus, was beautiful, blue, looked like the ocean, and, yes, was really very high up for a navigable lake (though this “highest _____ in the world!” thing gets rather monotonous in Bolivia).

We stayed in a little town called Copacabana on the lake’s shores – suspect it doesn’t even remotely resemble the hottest spot north of Havana, but was a cosy, quiet place, at least until all the day’s tourist buses started to arrive.

We explored it in an afternoon. And marvelled in sheer joy at Bolivian prices – unfortunately not working out much cheaper for us, as we stubbornly insist on eating huge meals at nice restaurants, with lots of Bolivian wine, refusing to quibble over increments of 30p.

We then spent a day on the dusty and Inca-legendary Isla del Sol, a little way out on the lake (apparently, but hard to believe given the ludicrously slow boat ride it took to get there).

The island was the birthplace of the sun according to Inca mythology, and dotted with ruins which, after our Cusco experiences, we resolutely ignored. Walked across its hills instead, got covered in its dust, and had a surprisingly welcome beer at its lone hilltop beer-selling shack. 

And then we made for La Paz, via a rather unnerving lake crossing at which we were ordered off our bus and stood watching as it was hauled across Lake Titicaca on what appeared to be a raft made of rope and driftwood.

Fortunately it and we survived intact, and trundled on to the building-spattered mountainsides of La Paz, reminding us a little of Quito.

Like many South American cities, it is noisy and crowded, though surprisingly has the air of one huge market – we arrived among the usual street stalls yesterday evening, and awoke this morning to find the roads outside our hotel had been transformed: there is market everywhere. We explored for a few hours, and still there was market everywhere – it fills the city.

But I will have to continue on my lonesome own tomorrow, as Rich is off to risk his life on a mountain bike down the world’s most dangerous road. I, I think, will find a nice bookshop and maybe get my hair cut. And hold on to a copy of Rich’s travel insurance.