We have decided that we are allergic to long distance buses and the roads that they travel. Especially after India. Especially ones that mean 18 hours of looking into the wide yawning river valleys that are literally a metre away from any window! Complete with bald and threadbare tires too! Picking up every man, his pile of market goods and his coati (a raccoon type jungle animal that make very good pets) too. With the rainy season well and truly in place, the 18 hrs was a MINIMUM. Six day waits were not unheard of. Thanks, but no thanks!

But we need a way of out Rurre, and a bus wasn't going to cut it! And since the plane was the only other option option, we were very happy to blow the budget completely and get to La Paz in a stunning one hour. AMS (Ed: Accute mountain sickness) be damned!

Rurre airport is really a jungle grass strip cut out of the ever encroaching jungle. Each bloke from the airline had a variety of jobs (they can't complain of the lack of job stimulation!) from check-in clerk, to bus driver, to re-fueler, to baggage handler and even the guy with the ping pong bats who waves them at the plane!Ah, not to forget the job of checking boarding passes too. You never know who might try and slip through the tight security and claim a seat for their own on the 19 seater plane!

Up and away and into the clouds we headed. Bumping, rattling and shaking into the clouds with glimpses of brown rivers and green carpets below. Not long after we were above sun-drenched clouds before diving back into the clouds to dodge the high peaks that guard the city's airport and get buffeted here and there before we landed on a very wet and rain slicked runway. Welcome to La Paz.

When we eventually made it to a place to stay on the shores of Lake Titicaca and were enjoying a beer, we marvelled at the fact that during that day we had left the jungle hot and steamy, arrived in a rain storm and headed out to the lake and saw how different the altiplano is from where we had been that very morning! This morning we were on Mars and had transitted through Venus before eventually getting to Saturn by way of a very dodgy bus ferry. To be fair to the Bolivians, they know the bus ferries are dodgy. It seemed like the ferry could only take just a little more choppy water before the bus, and all the bags would be providing a new lake reef for them to enjoy!

Although there is a beach here, complete with beautiful clear lake water, canoes and pedeloes for hire, and its fair share of llama handlers and lake side trout restos, it is not Rio's famous Copacabana beach! The town here shares a name with the beach in Rio and that is all, I suspect! The weather here, even on a hot day, is not conducive for lounging around in next to no bikini. The sun would either burn you to a crisp or the water temperature would give you hypothermia!

Not far from here, via a three hour very slow overcrowded ferry, are the sacred Inca islands of Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) and Isla del Luna (Island of the moon); the very beating heart of the Inca culture where all their creation myths began. On the islands are communities of people who need to get onto the mainland and there are always people heading to the islands. Hence, the town is now a ferry port and a market place for islanders to sell their produce from back home.

Copacabana is a small town, not much more than 3500 people, and it nestles between two peaks which afford the most spectacular views over the lake and the surrounding landscape. Just over the water is Peru (at these heights 3800m plus, the air is exceptional clear and so distances seemingly diminish); at about 50km! It was when we huffed and puffed our way to the top of the nearby Cerro Cavalry (at 4100m, practically the same height as Annapurna Base Camp!), past the 14 stations of The Cross and the various shrines and altars on the way that we had our hands shaken and a brief, excited explanation given to us accompanied by a broad happy smile. The two old men with creased eyes and lines all over their faces told us enthusiastically, as the sun drifted under the horizon for a rendezvous of its own and the sky darkened, that, "Mi padre es el sol y mi madre es la luna!"

The Incas believed that their emperors were children of the sun and the moon and these men clearly believed that they were children of the sun and moon. Not that they thought that they were long lost emperors trying to re-claim a glorious past. Being farmers, maybe they were more so than they thought! But what impressed us was their absolute conviction that this was so.

The Bolivians have a festival of small things, normally in January each year. But here, halfway between the town and the top of Cerro Cavalry, on a prominent spot overlooking the lake, groups of people were having little ceremonies of their own. The belief is that if you have a miniature of what you want to appear in the year ahead, you must go through the blessing and ceremony. This way, what is now miniature, will become manifest later!

To add more colour in this religious picture, the town has a very interesting church. At first glance it seems almost Moorish in its design and even its finish. But it is very Catholic on the inside with plenty of chapels off to the side and a highly decorated Baroque finish behind the alter. There is no mistake that this is a Catholic place of worship. Even though the smock clad monks wore baseball caps outside, there was no mistaking Catholism here!

But behind the church, in a small chapel called the Chapel of Fire, is a darkened room with two waist high troughs where worshippers come and light candles and let them burn while making whatever ministrations that they feel necessary. What makes it slightly bizarre is that the troughs are literally ponds of melted candle wax with islands of burning wicks that make the whole trough seem ablaze. Beside the small openings in the roof above, the light is provided from the candles burning away. The walls are black with soot and here and there worshippers have taken melted wax and made bas-relief sculptures on the walls. Slightly odd and ghoulish when worshippers looked up slightly dazed and sightless before they focussed on these strangers in their midst!

Daylight was welcome relief but the sight of all sorts, shapes and types of vehicles festooned in flowers and being washed down in water, beer or coca-cola was intriguing. What was more so was that the baseball cap wearing monks were splashing holy water over the vehicles and giving benedictions and blessings after fumigating the interiors with thick clouds of incense. The ceremonies ended with vast amounts of firecrackers being let off in front of, under and behind the vehicle. Hah! The Blessing of the Automobile Ceremony! Bring your motor for a blessing! Colourful, loud and certainly entertaining!

Here was a place where all the fundamental tenements of the Bolivian's religion seemed to have found each other, woven together and become something new and no tenement seemed particularly fazed by the other. They all seemed to get along fine.....maybe they could take this attitude of harmony to the world! Imagine all the people......