10/3/2012 - Into Bolivia, Copacabana

An hour from the border crossing into Bolivia, our bus was greeted with a line of cheerful but determined middle-aged Peruvian women blocking the road. I learned later that the protest was about land disputes – apparently the Peruvians want Copacabana to be part of Peru and are thus trying to block the border to stop supplies arriving into land-locked Bolivia.

Standard day on the Peru-Bolivia border

 Somehow our bus managed to skirt the first blockade but 10 minutes before the border we were confronted with another and this time the women really weren't going to budge, so we had to walk it.

In my experience, South America seems to be a place where you have to do your research and be clued up before doing anything that involves money. A lot of travellers I had met got angry and annoyed about the constant attempts of many locals to try and rip you off but I saw it as good fun and a bit of a challenge. This is why I couldn't help but giggle when a woman tried to give me a pitiful exchange rate at an “official” money exchange kiosk. I turned to the guy in the kiosk literally next to her and after some gesticulating got a decent rate from him. Do I feel sorry for the hundreds of people she rips off everyday? NO! Do your research people.

The border crossing itself went smoothly and before I knew it I was in a mini bus bound for Copacabana, a small Bolivian harbour town which sits on the shore of Lake Titikaka.

After finding a room in a hostel overlooking the harbour, I booked myself on a boat for Isle del Sol (an island in the middle of the lake) tomorrow morning, and thus had the rest of the day to kill in Copacabana. “If you want to come back to the hostel after 11pm I will show you how to use the gate” said the kid who'd checked me into the hostel and can't have been older than 17.

“No, it's ok, unless there's a good place to go partying in Copacabana?” I asked.

He smiled a sad smile, looked down and shook his head. It must suck to be a teenager here.

I hadn't had any fresh fish since those lazy days on the Colombian coast so when the lakeside shacks beckoned me in for a lunch of freshly caught trout, I duly obliged. The double-carbs made a reappearance (rice and chips this time) but I steered clear and the fish itself was excellent.

Another thing I hadn't done for a while was any exercise so after lunch I set off on a meaty 4-hour hike along the lakeside using some sketchy instructions from my lonely planet guide. The scenery was spectacular and the sense of adventure was augmented by mild assaults from territorial dogs and the odd rally car speeding along the dirt road along which I was walking (turns out they were practising for a race tomorrow). Lake Titikaka is huge to the point where the opposite bank is invisible to the naked eye and the bank to the east was framed by snow capped mountains in the distance - it felt more like walking next to a sea than any “lake” I'd ever been to.

As dusk approached I still hadn't reached my final destination and, although the occasional minibus had passed me, the lonely planet guide suggested getting a lift back to Copacabana might prove difficult. Despite this I persevered, convinced that if the worst came to the worst I would retrace my steps. My weary legs weren't so sure. Finally arriving at my destination, the village of Yampupata, I was overjoyed to see a minivan still parked by the harbour and the driver said he'd give me a lift back for a quid. I was less overjoyed when I saw that I would be sharing the journey with what must have been several hundred kilograms worth of freshly caught fish.

Having stuffed the minibus full, we set off and it quickly became apparent that our driver was in a hurry. Setting a pace not dissimilar to the rally cars I'd seen earlier, we quickly caught up and overtook several 4x4's I'd seen leave the village 5 minutes ahead of us. As we sped along the winding road, lined with more than the odd sheer drop, I envisaged headlines in the South Manchester Reporter in the event that this journey should be my last (they all revolved around sleeping with the fishes). On the other hand I reflected that this ride was far more exhilarating than many roller-coasters I'd been on. Probably because the potential for death was a bit more real.

Back in Copacabana I had trouble finding food that wasn't pizza or burgers but eventually stumbled upon the still-open market where old women cooking in the open air could be relied upon to provide cheap greasy fare. Copacabana is another town where the monster of tourism has begun to devour everything in its path and I didn't feel compelled to spend any more time here than I had to.