Isla del Sol, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia 22nd - 23rd April

So after a begrudged breakfast served at our crap Copacabana hotel (thank you Colonial Hostal) - waiter was the grumpiest yet in South America, we headed down to the port to jump on our boat heading to the Isla del Sol.

We opted to go on top of the boat rather than underneath, for a better view, forgetting that it was 2 hours to get there. Fortunately we had more clothes with us than some of the others who were up there in shorts, as soon as the sun went in, it was freezing. First hour was pretty dull, just lake and the shoreline, but soon we sailed through a teeny tiny gap in the rocks and saw the full view - the lake with the snowcapped Cordilleras Real in the background and the sun came out. Spectacular.

We´d opted to go to the north of the island and got dropped off at Challapampa, where we planned to walk down to Yumani on the island´s 4 hour wander (4 hours according to Lonely Planet...). As we got off and started walking we saw the couple who´d been on the bus with us to Puno and had kindly given us a plastic bag for paul to vom into. Friends forever.

We were slightly surprised that quite a few people seemed to just hang around in Challapampa to get the boat back in a couple of hours. There´s not a lot there to occupy you for that and the boat ride, while scenic at the start is a wee bit dull...

The walk was reasonably easy going despite the altitude. It wound along the coast for a while and then cut into the centre of the island. We´d been going for around a couple of hours and passed through 3 or 4 check points - you need to pay a little toll to travel on the path from north to south - when we realised we´d already made it to Yumani!

It was about lunchtime at this point and we started passing a LOT of pizza places - sounds a lot more cosmopolitan than it actually was. Literally wee shacks on the side of the path. Paul was insisting that we keep walking through to the end, despite me getting rather grumpy about the fact that we seemed to be going downhill and so would need to stagger back up again eventually to find somewhere to stay... He eventually found a little spot overlooking the lake and the mountains and insisted we stop for a break... me still grumpy as it was LUNCHTIME for goodness sake... Anyhoo, soon found out that grander things were on his mind than a bite of Sublime choccie as he got down on one knee to ask me to marry him with a ring he had sneakily managed to buy in Cuzco!!

Cue quite a few tears (in my defence, it was hot and we had been walking at altitude for 2 hours and it was TOTALLY unexpected!) but eventually gathered my thoughts enough to say yes! Then a bottle of red wine and some real Cadbury's choccie appeared and I don´t think we could have been happier at that point. What a treat - clearly he knows the way to my heart!

After all this, i discovered that he´d also booked the nicest hotel on the island as a little treat to celebrate, so we headed off up there... only to find in broken spanish from one of the maids that they didn´t have a booking in our name and they were fully booked with groups... Which was a much bigger disappointment to Paul i think - i was still pretty happy with the whole engagement thing to be honest. Anyway, much consulting with Lonely Planet and a lot of tramping up and down a very steep village later, and we´d found a lovely little place with an incredible view so all was well... until supper time when most places we tried had literally only one or 2 things on the menu! Found somewhere eventually and had some beautifully fresh trout so all good to celebrate the engagement!

The next morning after a lovely breakfast and Paul enjoying a good chat with the guy who ran the place despite neither of them speaking the other´s language (gold tooth filling and a massive jewel in his ring led us to think he´s not doing too badly), we headed down to the port to wait for the boat, which we thought would be about a 45 minute wait. However, as soon as we got down there, we met a chap touting for business with his little boat and jumped straight in with a few locals to speed our way back across the Lake.

What a start to Bolivia...