Day 59 - La Paz to Copacabana, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

Time to move on from La Paz to head to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca. 

We finally manage to get to the bus with about 15 seconds to spare thanks to a lot of faff from the hotel on check out and them booking our taxi for the wrong bus station. Idiots! It's touch and go but we get there in the nick of time. 

The traffic is terrible on the way out of La Paz and the roads very bumpy. It amazes me how this massive bus even gets up the steep hills as it zig zags it's way out of the bowl. We get our last views of the epic scenary of La Paz as we reach the top and head out across El Alto. 

The bus is more of a local type bus this time but comfortable enough. Apart from when the selfish woman in front puts her seat back. Now I am not a tall man and even I struggled with the leg room!

And get even more annoyed when she proceeds to rest her head on my lap through the gap in the chairs (the gap is only so big as her seat is back so far!). 

The scenary soon changes and we get some great views across be plains towards the snow capped Andes. 

Locals doing their washing in the stream. 

We soon hit the edge of Lake Titicaca which looks amazing. At 3,800 meters this is the highest navigable lake in the world which feels like a dubious made up title to me (navigable basically means a large commercial ship can go on it).  Anyway it is huge and beautiful, the biggest lake in South America with a shore length of 700 miles. 

After a couple of hours on the road we reach the lake crossing that we have read about (luckily we had or else we would have wondered what the heck was going on). Needless to say this is the barge that ferries our bus across. 

We have to get a separate boat across which we are glad about as that barge doesn't look like it will make it over! We pay our 20 bolivianos (about 15p) each to cross and jump on our little boat for the 10min crossing. 

So far so good. They even stick another van on to really test the barge!

Nat's mate not sure about her!!

The water is absolutely crystal clear. It makes you just want to dive in although the water is pretty cold. 

Made it! 

Cool bit of advertising on the other side of the lake. 

The journey gets quite mountainous now as we follow the coast line for the remaining hour to Copacabana. 

Again we are treated to amazing scenary but the camera never quite does it justice.

Hello Copacabana  

We arrive in a gorgeous little town which has quite a lot of character. This is more like it!

We arrive at about 14:00 to a town with a power cut which doesn't come back on until about 19:00 that evening. We check into our gorgeous hotel called the Rosario LagoTiticaca 

http://www.gruporosario.com/hotels-grupo-rosario/hotel-rosario-lago-titicaca

Cracking view from our hotel room window and balcony. 

Our room is huge - it's like a suite. 

We can even have bath over looking the lake!

We head out for an explore of the lovely little town. It is boiling here but a strange heat. The actual temperature is quite cool but the sun is boiling as we are so high (something we also experienced in La Paz yesterday when we both burned a little). Luckily all the weather forecasts about rain have been wrong so far. Long may it continue!

We have a beer and then make some plans. For our leg post Copacabana we decide to scrap Puno which is supposed to be a bit of hole and go to Arequipa instead. Its a longer journey but should be well worth it. We book our bus tickets that actually goes via Puno anyway so we will still see a bit of it!

Not sure about the atomic bomb that just went off though. No wonder it feels hot!! 

The towns main drag. 

We are both really feeling the effects of the altitude and have banging head aches so decide to head back for a sleep. We are drinking a ridiculous amount of water with very little effort at all - two litre bottles are lasting about three hours. Crazy! We are not even sweating so god knows where it is all going. 

Lovely sunset over the lake. 

That evening we get up and have dinner at a place called Mankha Uta. The temperature is starting to drop a fair bit and whilst it isn't freezing there is a chill in the air (Nat the reptile is obviously freezing and has 14 layers on). It actually has a real ski feel to the place though as all the restaurants are small and wooden and tend to have fires etc. Very cosy. After a nice spag bol each we head back to bed.  

Not even boozing due to altitude! That's how bad it is!! ;-)

Loving this place and very happy we have three nights here. 

PS. This is Nat. Had to add a comment on today's blog, hope you don't mind. As you may know I find it incredibly difficult to make Aaron laugh out loud ( it averages around twice a year for a full belly laugh) but today he succeeded in making me lol TWICE in one day. He was clearly a tired boy and was so pleased with the travel agent for sorting us out a lovely bus, that he exclaimed 'MERCI BEAUCOUP!' in a loud voice. As we left, I am sure the poor travel agent was left in a state of utter confusion as she tried to work out whether we were English or in fact, French. Then, only around 20 minutes later, we arrived back at our hotel and Aaron thought he would dazzle the friendly check in staff with his amazing Spanish skills by saying 'BUENOS AIRES' with a huge smile on his face. Of course, he thought he was saying Buenos Dias, the check in staff, however, now think he is obsessed with Argentina. These epic linguistic fails were brought to you by the wonderful Mr.Aaron Bean.

Aaron here again. Nat is being very unruly today. I was actually asking if she was from Buenos Aires - honest!! ;-)