Copacabana and Lake Titicaca

Hello all!

This past weekend the two other girls in my CFHI program, a Scottish medical student named Scott (that I met at the hospital) and myself traveled by bus to Lake Titicaca.

To see pictures from the trip I'm describing below (along with a few of my room in La Paz) check out my facebook album here:

this is the address in case that link doesn't work:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150319656536718.389908.504936717&l=0ee0ac8671

We woke up early and got to the cemetery (where the public transit buses leave) at about 7:15, took a scenic bus ride down to Titicaca (had to stop to cross a strait) and arrived at Copacabana at around 11:30. The first thing we did when we arrived was check out the Mudejar Cathedral which has the famous statue of the Virgen de Candelaria – to which come pilgrims from both Bolivia and Peru. We then ate a fresh trout lunch (trout is farmed in the lake, so this was extremely fresh) down by the beach with a great view. A precious little kid joined us for a while – he clearly loved the attention of tourists. After lunch we hopped on a boat for an hour and a half ride to the south part of the island (the town of Yumani). We hiked upwards for a good 30 or 40 minutes and then found our hostel where we had reserved a very nice four person room with a shower, breakfast and beautiful view all for about $11 (Overall including 4 meals, all travel expenses, the hostel and any extra purchases, the weekend cost us each about $40 -- just another example of how cheap things are here). We walked up to the top of a nearby hill to watch the gorgeous sunset over the rest of the island. The snow-capped mountains in the background turned a beautiful pink and purple color as the sun set. After we were satisfied with the thousands of pictures we took (I edited the facebook album to include only my favorites -- which is clearly still an overwhelming number of pictures...) we came back down and ate another fresh fish dish, this time by candlelight (while possibly for romantic atmosphere, it was more likely for lack of electricity), joined by two other English speaking travelers, a man from India named Ali (who we hiked with the following day) and a student from a school in Boston. We ended up going to bed around 9:30 (who knows the last time I went to bed that early…) because everything was already dark and cold on the island.

The next morning we woke up and had breakfast at our hostel and then were joined by Ali to walk the length of the island. On the walk we had some amazing views of the lake and the surrounding lands. It was very hard to resist taking thousands of pictures because everywhere I looked it seemed like there was a new beautiful view with bright colors that I wanted to capture. It took us about 3.5 hours to walk the length of the island, and then we headed backwards via a different route to the northern port of Cha’llampampa where we took a second boat back to the south. There we ate lunch and then took the last boat back to Copacabana. We tried to take a bus immediately back to La Paz but they told us that they only had space on their final bus that left at 7 (tough traveling back on a Sunday -- lots of tourists taking weekend trips) but this actually ended up giving us a fantastic opportunity to see an unbelievably gorgeous sunset from some Incan site on a hill overlooking Copacabana. We got back to La Paz late that night and crashed. All in all it was a fantastic weekend and a great exposure to the beauty of the lake and Bolivia as a whole.

This week I'm at El Servicio de los Adolescentes, a health clinic for boys and girls from ages 10-25. I will update some information about that experience in the next day or so.

With love from Bolvia!
Whitaker