¡Hola!

As Eddy once said: 'Taxi - the Copacabana'; although I'm pretty sure he was talking about that beach in Rio de Janeiro and not this dusty old tourist trap just inside the Bolivian border.We developed a kind of love-hate relationship with Copacabana.At first it was an annoying place - we arrived without a cent in Bolivian money and, despite being a border town, Copacabana didn't have an ATM (apart from one that didn't accept either Visa or Mastercard!), and the banks who could offer a cash advance would only open at really unhelpful times, such as 3pm on a Tuesday.In the end we had to keep changing our 'emergency dollars' at questionable 'casas de cambio' so that we had some cash to sleep and eat.We also spent at least an hour when we arrived in the sweltering heat trying to find a room that was OK; Copacabana seemed to be full of crappy rooms which all had one thing or another wrong with them, and a host of very rude hoteliers to go with them.No, we were definitely not in Peru anymore.

However, the next day we headed out into Lake Titicaca to the island of Isla del Sol, the birthplace of the Incas and the site of their creationist story.We spent the morning visiting Inca sites at the North end of the island, including the brilliant labyrinthine Chincana ruins, and then trekked down the length of the island along a ridge offering spectacular views across Lake Titicaca on both sides of the island.The lake looked particularly amazing from up here, with high-altitude Cirrus clouds hanging spookily low over the water - the only giveaway of just how high up we were.We stayed the night at the South of the island in a lovely little en-suite room on top of the ridge, with views of both the sunset and sunrise, which cost us about £3.50.

The next day we headed back to Copacabana, where things had gotten more complicated: a strike by the ferry operators had cut off the only route to La Paz indefinitely.We would have to go back into Peru to try another border crossing.We decided to stay one more night in Copacabana though, since my friend Claire from UCL was coming back from Isla del Sol that evening.Claire had been trailing a few stops behind us for a long time in South America, yet the opportunity to meet up had only just presented itself - and just in time too, since Claire was just about to turn North again to head back up to Lima.We met Claire at the harbour and headed up to a restaurant to spend our last few Bolivianos on some fresh trout and beer.

The trip to La Paz the next day was an adventure.The bus operator, who had assured us a coach would be going all the way there the next morning, had let us down, so we decided to get there the old-fashioned way by jumping on a series of colectivos (mini-van taxis).Technically we were required to stay in Peru for 24 hours before re-entering Bolivia, but with a bit of explanation at each border crossing, in our best Spanish, we were allowed to get through, and we arrived in La Paz in the afternoon having spent a fraction of what the coach would have cost us.A quick glance at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office webpage later made for some interesting reading though - it basically specifically advised against everything that we had done that morning… whoops.

R&M

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