Sat 26th March 2011

Today we had to go to a well dodgy part of town to take a bus to Copacabana, Lake Titicaca. We had missed the 1 tourist bus of the day so ended up on a local bus; super cheap (like 2quid for 3.5hour journey) but of course we were the only tourists on the thing so stuck out like a sore thumb.
Our hotel in Copacabana was luxury for us, nicest place we'd stayed for a while. We spent a couple of days wandering the charming town and just relaxing. I was excited about the main tourist attraction- 'Isla del Sol'- an island located a couple of hours of away on Lake Titicaca but the whole day turned out to be a disaster.

Firsty, it was raining- never a good start when you know your day is going to revolve around long walks. Then we had a 2.5hour journey on a really uncomfortable boat that seemed to last forever. Our butts were numb from the tiny wee chairs that were like children's school chairs that had been nailed to the deck of the boat. We got off at the north end of the island and walked in the pouring rain for a few hours, struggling to breathe with the altitude, uphill to some ancient Inca sites. Not really worth it. We then caught another boat to the south part of the island and then finally headed back to Copacabana….The boat was going so slow for 2 hours and it was just dragging on and on, but thank God that it was going slow cos the next thing we know we're in a head on collision with another boat!!!!! I still can't quite believe what happened and it never should have happened in such a massive lake. Steve just grabbed me and we looked on in horror as the boat crashed right into us- 2 tourists who were sitting on the front of our boat had to jump into the freezing lake (cameras and everything on them) to avoid being crushed between the 2 boats and a guy later had to go to hospital for cuts & injuries from the broken glass windows. Everyone started throwing on life jackets (I was genuinely surprised there were any in Bolivia as health and safety hasn't really kicked in here) but we were really lucky and despite about 5 minutes of panic where we all thought the impact would have caused enough damage to sink the boat, the driver reassured us that he'd checked the boat and that we could make it the 20minutes to shore. We were so relieved when we got back on dry land!

xxx