Maturity is not our strong suit - Day 3

I couldn't have Kyla visit me all the way in Bolivia and Peru without giving her a little flavour of the "life of a backpacker"and so, on day 3 of her visit, we boarded a 4hr bus in LaPaz at 7.30am bound for Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca.
As was to be expected there were delays. Seems the poorer folk living in El Alto (a suburb of La Paz) are not down with the public transportation price hikes (I hear you nodding your head in agreement Mr. Wehrspann) and therefore the blockades took us off route some but was interesting to see some more local areas of La Paz from the safety of the bus. 

 As part of the journey our bus also needed to cross part of the lake... here is a little insight into how this is accomplished.  Do you see our bus doing a slight nose dive on the wooden plank of a boat it was placed on?  We were on this blue, red and while beauty in the foreground.

When we made it to Copacabana our guide Mike set us up with a private boat to the North part of Isla del Sol (the island of the sun) in lake Titicaca so we could see the largest ruins on the island and hike to the south where we would sleep for the night in a hostel. I had heard the north was beautiful and the walk worth the effort so I figured it made sense to make this part of our itinerary.
Below is the view of Copacabana from our private boat. We are so shee shee to have our own boat but it was terrific to have so much time together and be away from the throngs of backpackers I am normally surrounded by.

Once we arrived on Isla del Sol we understood better that the hike was 10km long, we had arrived late so would be walking in the dark for probably half of the journey and the trail of course was up and down so the fact that we were now at 4,300m was going to give us some respiratory challanges. Kyla kept telling me that she did not recall me mentioning this as part of our itinerary. I told her this will teach her to read the fine print! Here is part of the trail while the sun was still in the sky. It is beautiful and as Kyla continues to say... it is even more memorable because we both thought we might die during the walk. Ah memories to last a lifetime.  I could not love my sister more.

Ky and I at a part of the ruins we visited before the sun dropped out of the sky and I had to break out the head lamp so we could see where we were going for the remaining 3-5kms! (Thanks for the great Christmas present Mom & Dad!)  There really is no way to describe the hike. We wanted to laugh so badly but there was just so little oxygen in our lungs to begin with that we had to wait until we finally arrived to our hostel (yes Kyla stayed in a hostel after all this! How great is my sister!). The room was freezing so we drank about 6 cups of coca tea (said to help with altitude) and enjoyed yet another trout dinner (main dish served here from the lake even though the fish is not even native to the area)  and headed to bed. 

 This is the view we woke up to from our hostel window. Yes hostels can be amazing.

Sadly this was about 20mins before the torrential downpour started, which lasted the entire day. We had to walk down to the boats you can see in the bay to get back to Copacabana. The path was a landmine of animal poo and a river of water. Which would you choose? I feel like I ended up choosing both over the 30mins it took to decent. Lose/Lose. Needless to say we got drenched and sat in front of the small resturant wood fireplace in town at lunch in an attempt to dry off slightly before boarding our 3hr bus to Puno, Peru. Yes I am packing in the adventure every day so Kyla goes home with plenty of stories and possibly a need to go on vacation. Sorry C Roy!

xox

b and B