The center of La Paz is situated in a valley, and the top of the valley is called El Alto, it's the part that has been expanding quickly in the last few years and in general is much lower income. As we were leaving La Paz, our driving spent a ton of time telling us about a famous architect who built lots of buildings in El Alto. We were on our way to a small town on Lake Titicaca. Bolivia and Peru share Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake.
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| Bolivian clouds are amazing |
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| Oddly shaped house |
After a couple hour drive, we arrived in Huatajata at our hotel. We were definitely the only people in the hotel and definitely the only tourists in the small town. At dinner we had the restaurant to ourselves, aka the VIP treatment. They opened up their small museum and we got to learn about the reed boats they used to construct. The guy at the museum talking to us had been a member of several crews to take these
reed boats internationally. These boats are only made of reeds, natural fiber rope, cotton sails and wood. They're massive, heavy, and can only be used for a few years before they absorb too much water. We learned about a variety of boats that have been built recently in the traditional style and made ocean crossings, for example Chilean mainland to Easter Island.
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| The port is open!!! |
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| Learning about boats |
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| You think these were for noms? |
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| Mop-paca eating outside the hotel |
We had hoped to take a hydrofoil boat across to Copacabana, but we were informed that would not be happening on the date we wanted. Instead, we dragged our stuff to the side of the road. With the help of one of the guys from the hotel, we managed to get a bus to pick us up and drive us to Copacabana. On the bus, I got recognized as a Seattlite by the Fremont Brewing sticker on my water bottle. We also crossed the sketchiest ferry I may ever see.
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| Bus please. |
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| Our bus getting on the ferry. All the passengers got off and took a separate boat across. |
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| More ferry pics. |
When we got to Copacabana, we checked into our room and discovered that there were alpacas lawn mowing. We met the owner of the hotel Martin, and he encouraged us to pet the alpacas. Bucketlist CHECK.
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| Snugglesssss! |
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| For reals. |
Copacabana had a pretty big beach where you could rent anything from jet skis to these inflatable bubbles you could float around on the water in. Oddly, the water felt really slimy so none of us swam.
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| I love the colors. |
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| High quality docks |
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| Sunrise from our hotel |
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| Fun with night photos!! |
The next morning we took a boat over to La Isla Del Sol. It's one of the Bolivian islands in the lake. It has some super old ruins and a really gorgeous hike that we did the next day. We took another boat up to the north side of the island to start the hike. It walked to some ruins and then took us down the spine of the island to the south side and our hostel. We got to see sheep, pigs and a whole lot of rocks and lake during the day. Not a lot of shade at all.
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| For some reason, all the boats go through that tiny opening instead of around the rocks on the right. |
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| The little girl from the family that ran the hostel instructed us to throw rocks at this dog because its not their dog. |
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| Beginning of our Isla del Sol trek |
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| Beach with free camping! |
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| Corn and hiking |
We got to see a gorgeous sunset as we walked down the steps back to the bay where our hostel was. Lake Titicaca is at a higher elevation than La Paz, so we were all pretty wiped after the hike. The next morning we took a boat back to Copacabana. That evening we stumbled across quite a party! And apparently it wasn't even the real thing. A bus company was celebrating another year of profitable business, and this was the pre-party to their party. It involved a band, dancing, and lots and lots of beer. We then booked our bus tickets for the following day. The Websters were off to Peru, and I was headed back down south to take Spanish lessons in Sucre.
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| The men dancing |
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| Waitin' to start dancing |
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| Drinking beer to get ready to dance |
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| Skirt twirls! |
