So there we were, Copacabana, Bolivia, where we promptly realized that the town had no ATM and we had about $40 left from Ecuador and maybe 30 sols left from Peru. fortunately, the fact that copacabana is on the border meant that most businesses accepted dollars and sols, or at least had booths at which you could change your money. fortuately $40 takes you a looooong way in Bolivia, although it meant that we had to break into the reserve stash...oh well. we checked into a hostel, had dinner and went to bed fairly early.
The next day we got up at like 7 maybe and headed down to the docks, where we took the slowest-moving ferry i have ever witnessed in my life. our destination was the Isla del Sol, an island in the middle of the lake that was a holy place for the Tiahuanacos, the predecessors to the Incas. the boat took about an hour and a half and we then took a tour of the north side of the island. We saw all these rock tables on which they used to sacrifice goats, and this other giant rock from which they believed the first two gods arose in order to create the world. It was cool--they have a big celebration on the island every year on the summer solstice, and they all sit around this table next to the creation rock upon which the first rays of sunlight hit on the day of the solstice. As in Peru as a result of the incan and pre-incan culture, the condor and the puma hold very special significance, along with the sun and light. as the tour guide took us around the island he made sure to point out all the "pumas" and "condors" you could see in the rocks, which lets be honest were a bit of a stretch but hey, its all in the eye of the beholder i guess. It was funny because the guide didnt speak any english and asked in the beginning if someone could translate for him. at first this french woman was like i can translate but she would translate to french and her friends would help her with the english...to make a long story short i ended up translating the whole time. it was especially funny because there were a whole bunch of israelis on the boat and had been talking to them in hebrew and then when i started speaking spanish they were all like "who are you and how many languages do you speak exactly?" anywho, after the tour everyone either took the boat to the south side or hiked across the island, which is what lucy and i did. what a beautiful place...you could really get a sense of the shape of the whole island by walking across it like that. the water was this brilliant blue that was completely transparent for the first maybe 12 feet from the shore and you could look out on the lake, which really looked like the ocean with no land in sight. there was a forest of eucalyptus which smelled absolutely amazing...we took our time and ended up booking it the last leg to avoid being stuck there, but the walk was really lovely.
we took it easy that night (and ended up discovering a new ATM!) and headed for La Paz the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment