The president of Bolivia is visiting Coroico the day we leave Le Senda. Our taxi gets us as close to the town as he can then reverses 5 minutes back down the hill as the roads are closed. We walk the rest of the way back up, find a minibus going to La Paz and wait. No vehicles are allowed to leave Coroico until El Presidente arrives. We stand there watching a motorcade pass and spot him on his way in.

We spend two days in La Paz eating, relaxing and head to Copacabana. Our visa for Bolivia is running out and we need to get moving so we spend only a night in Copacabana which sits on the shore of Lake Titicaca. This is not as glamorous as it may sound as the shore looked a little run down and dilapidated in places. We'd heard the walking around Copacabana was great and it certainly looked good too but we had little energy for hills and the like. The highlight of our stay was listening to Barry Manilow's Copacabana whist tooking into lunch.

The next day we arrive in bustling Puno, Peru and discover where all the locals are eating. The food is good! I go for Alpaca steak and Andrew has the trusty menu del dia (traditional 2 course lunch). We book ourselves on a tour to the floating islands. These islands are made of reed roots and stems are anchored twenty minutes from Puno on Lake Titicaca. As we approach down a reed lined boatway we're surprised to see cattle and pigs grazing on what appears to be shallow areas of reeds. We're greeted at the first island by a group of cheery locals and are educated in how the islands are built and maintained. We're then invited to look around. We visit a lady in her house reed house. It's warm and cozy inside and she insists I try on some of her fluorescent clothes. Not surprisingly these people although living in reed huts are very savy when it comes to money making opportunities and we are next expected to buy some item from her market. This turns out to be an expensive piece of embroidery that we both don't particularly like that much. For a further fee we then take a ride on a boat made from reeds with children singing to us in all languages for yet more money. The sun goes down and it turns cold but the sunset is pretty special as we glide slowly to the next island. We take a look around and notice they have a public telephone and are told that they hope to have the internet fairly soon! Hi-tech floating islands. Although you could easily get fleeced for much more cash then you intended to spend we really enjoyed this trip.