Two days ago, I took the bus to Copacabana, a village on the Bolivian shore of the lake. By the way: The Brazilian Copacabana "stole" its name from this sacred place. The name comes from the Quechua words "Qupa" (clear, happy, serene) and "Qhawana" (place from which you can see far) and was transformed to Copacabana by the Spaniards. With the splendid views you get over Lake Titicaca, the name of the village could not have been chosen better.
The three hours bus trip there was quite nice: I chatted with an American lady living since 20 years in Hong Kong and asmired the landscape: most of the time, we had nice views on the lake. The border crossing was quite an adventure. The border was quite chaotic and there was no real border control. You had to go to border police / immigration offices on both sides to fill in form and get your stamps.. however, nobody would have realised if you crossed the border without these formalities.. and in fact, the local people just croiss the border like that.. with however some routine controls of customs.. I observed a surprising egg and beer trade their as the prices on the Bolivian side are MUCH cheaper, it is worth while importing it in huge quantities into Peru. This is however done in small portions: mostly women, in their traditional dresses (several skirts and a too small of a bow hat and long black hair in two tails..) carry the stuff over the border.. buses and trucks (or should I use the British word lorries ??? ;-) ) are stuck on the narrow road, which makes it impossible for the traffic in the other direction to pass... All in all, it took as about an hour to have everybody in the bus through the formalities.. especially Americans and Maltese (don't ask me why Maltese...) had to pay 130 $ for the visa and had quite some trouble with more forms, photocopies to be made etc. In the meanwhile I could obsever the interesting and quite dynamic life at the border.. I especially liked the egg-trading.. ( I have some pictures of this later..)
Once arrived in Copacabana I checked into my nice hotel, the cupola, which offers a nice view over the lake. http://www.hotelcupula.com/default.asp Unfortunately, but luckily, I still got a room with shared bathroom, because this stupid guy in the hotel in Puno lied to me and said that he had confirmed the reservation for me, but actually had never called there.. even if he had called, the hotel was fully booked and only by chance somebody cancelled the reservation just some minutes before I arrived. The room is very nice and has heating !!! Then I went for lunch and had a very nice grilled trout with papas fritas in one of the food stalls along the Copacabana beach (Bolivia's only beach !!). Yummie...
From there I discovered the village, its nice cathedral.. yes, it is a village but has a cathedral as it is religiously a very important place because of its famous Madonna of Copacabana ("the dark virgin of the lake"). The cathedral itself is white, has several domes and also has coloured tiles ("azulejos")everywhere, which makes it very beautiful. In front of the cathedral, there is a strange thing going on every morning: the blessing of cars by a priest. All the cars line up (and there is almost a traffic jam there) and their owners put flowers and other ornaments on their cars. Then, after the blessing by the priest, the owners spray beer or sparkling wine on their cars. The whole ceremony should prevent any breakdown or accidents. In addition, they put little houses and cars, copies of fake diplomas and fake dollar bills on it, and ask the madonna to fulfil their wishes for a better life. The whole thing is really strange... but the church seems to support this "business" through the priests... In the late afternoon I climbed up the "cerro calvario", a hill next to the village from which there is an amazing view over the lake. To climb up there was quite a challenge because it was really steep and with the altitude this kind of physical effort is quite tiring.. especially you very quickly get breathing problems and have to pause for a bit... Almost on top, there were stands where some older men practiced weird semi-christian semi-pagan ceremonies: again, this involved spraying beer all over after having shaken the bottle, burning of some paper with which beforehand he had touched the couple which came to him.. at the same time he was murmuring some prayers..
I stayed on the top of the hill for the sunset and met a French couple (Gildas - a typical name from Brittany that I had never heard before but it seems that there is even a saint called like this... - and Céline) and a Slovenian girl, Andrea. After the sunset and a debate on Belgian politics (following their question "What is happening there ??") we tried to find a place for dinner... that wasn´t an easy task at all.. not so much because there was no offer, but rather because the Slovenian girl had very precise ideas about what shje wanted (very cheap, very nice and cosy place, a lot of food, etc..) After walking around for more than half an hour, we finally settled down in a quite cheap place (10 Bolivianos = 1 Euro for a menu with soup and a main course), but then she complained that there was not enough food.. I thought it was a nice place and good food.
From Copacabana, I also went by boat to the Isla del Sol (Sun Island), the legendary Inca island, which is the birthplace of the sun in Inca mythology. The god-king Viracocha and the first Incas, Manco Capac and his sister/wife Mama Occlo mystrically appeared there under direct orders from the sun. Most of Aymara and Quechua people in Peru and Bolivia still accept this legend as their creation myth.
This incredibly scenic island has one of the greatest views ever: To the east are the snow capped mountains of Bolivia (Cordillera Real) and to the west the rolling green hills of Peru. Just great. I did a half day hike from the North down to the South of the Island and visited some Inka and pre-Inka ruins on the way. The sun was so strong that I got a bit of a sunburn even though I had put plenty of sunblock, several times during the day...
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