Strange Times At Lake Titicaca And The Isla Del Sol

Despite the vast range of incredible scenery Bolivia has to offer, Lake Titicaca is the only place I was ‘are we nearly there yet’ excited about visiting.

It always seemed like the setting of a fantasy film in the photos I’d seen, with a rich history and descendants of the Incas still living there. And according to Inca mythology, the son of the sun and the moon was born on the famous Isla Del Sol.

It was one of the few remaining places in South America that I absolutely had to see, and was also a good weekend city break from crazy La Paz. As has so often been the case on my travels, however, things didn’t exactly turn out how I expected.

So this is the story of how an Englishman and an Argentinian ended up in a race against time across the entire island, with some rather strange hiking gear.

Buses on rafts

It’s a 4 hour road trip from La Paz to Copacabana, a small lakeside town which apparently came up with the name before Brazil did.

Roughly 40 minutes away from the town, you have to stop to cross a narrow stretch of water – the Straight of Tiquina. And crossing it is an amazing spectacle.

The government had planned on constructing a bridge, which would make sense since it’s not that wide and a lot of vehicles pass through. The locals had other ideas though, putting up a fierce fight to protect their livelihood of ferrying vehicles on huge wooden rafts as slowly as possible.

Seeing them pushing their rafts off with giant wooden poles, when it’s loaded with a full-sized bus and a van, is a sight to behold.

Bizarrely, any passengers have to pay for a separate taxi boat and then patiently wait for their vehicle, with nothing to do but take photos and do some potato shopping.

As with so many things in this country it makes no sense, but is a great photo opportunity.

Copacabana

Copacabana is an enchanting and lively little town with magnificent views of the enormous expanse of lake Titicaca. Apparently it’s long been a religious Mecca for locals, but it seemed more like a hippy mecca for foreigners.

Sure, there’s a disproportionately large church and colourful markets selling local produce and crafts. But there’s also electronic music, vegan cafes and dread-locked travelers selling dream-catcher earrings and crystals.

But as much as was it was fun to explore this random bohemian corner of Bolivia, I was disappointed to discover that we were in the wrong town.

Let me explain.

When I said lake Titicaca looked like something out of a fantasy film, it turns out that the photos I’d seen were of Puno and the floating islands. Which are 142 km away on the other side of the lake. In Peru.

Here’s a photo of what I was expecting to find:

And here’s a photo of what we actually found:

Not quite the same then. Despite that initial disappointment though, Copacabana turned out to be the perfect setting for a different kind of fantasy film.

There aren’t many places in the world where you’ll find women in bowler hats sitting on the beach with their Llamas, along with Donald Duck paddle boats, gangs of kids waging war with water pistols and rusty pans of water, and an English football-themed beach bar with giant posters of David Beckham from the 1990s.

The only thing missing was some 1960s music, balloons falling from the sky and a swirling Scooby-Doo vortex to take you back to the real world.

Getting to the Isla Del Sol

If you decide to visit the Isla Del Sol from La Paz, I highly recommend not doing it in 2 days. You really need 3 days to do the trip in a relaxing and enjoyable way.

Otherwise, like us, on one of the those days you’ll end up spending 4-5 hours in a boat, 4-5 hours in a vehicle and basically running, hiking, crawling and sweating your way across the island.

Let’s start at the beginning though.

Copacabana is full of tiny ‘I think I’ll convert my living room into a tour agency’ places, all basically selling you the same tickets for the same day trip on the same boats.

The next day, we got up before dawn and sleepily waited on the beach at 6:30 in the pouring morning rain, somewhat concerned to see the crew welding broken handrails back onto the roof of the boat.

They were still welding as we finally boarded, ushering us through the sparks to cram us into the leaking rust bucket.

The boat was so tightly packed with passengers, it was a lottery as to whether you were unlucky enough to be underneath one of the many holes letting in water at a worrying rate.

With nowhere else to move to, the poor French guy next to us spent 2 hours trying to catch the water dripping steadily onto his crotch.

1.5 hours later, we amazingly picked up even more passengers at the south end of the island, before heading to the north end where we were grateful to feel the sun on our faces and land under our feet.

The north end of the island

On arrival in the small community of Challapampa, you’re met by some cheerful indigenous tour guides, complete with matching outfits and the promise of seeing the most important of the 80 Inca ruins on the island.

The guides live on the island, along with 800 other families, and claim to be descendants of the Incas. So it felt right to tag along rather than wander around on our own looking at meaningless old stones.

Our guide took us on a beautiful walk through the community, past neat agricultural terraces and up the mountain to the ruins, pausing regularly to help those gasping desperately for oxygen in the thin air.

He explained the long history of the island and how it’s been continually occupied for more than 4000 years, with several civilizations there long before the Incas.

Of the various ruins he took us to, perhaps the most interesting was Titi Qala. The guide pointed to a face-like feature in the rock, explaining that it was from there that the first Inca King had emerged – Manco Capac, who they believed to be the offspring of the sun and the moon.

We were then invited to make offerings of drink and food at the sacred rock. I’m not sure if the Inca Gods are fans of Coca-Cola or cheese sandwiches, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

A race against time

At the north of the island, you’re given the choice of either sailing back to the south on the boat or doing an 8 km hike over the mountains, meeting up later.

When we asked the guide how long we would need for the hike, he told us 2 hours, which would give us plenty of time to go on his tour and still cross the island on foot in time for the boat’s departure back to Copacabana.

Along the hike, the locals set up little stone tolls, basically taxing gringos every couple of kilometers because, well, presumably they just feel it’s better than farming. And at the first toll they told us that no way was it a 2 hour hike – more like 3 hours, so we really needed to ‘fly’.

Presumably, our guide hadn’t told us how long we actually needed because he wanted 2 more people to ambush with his ‘you didn’t really think this was a free tour, did you?’ speech when he’d finished.

Seeing the rest of the group heading towards the boat already far in the distance, we turned to look up the steep mountain path. And started walking very fast.

Our hiking ‘gear’

I’ve ended up doing some accidental hikes a few times on my travels, often wishing I had different shoes, clothes, bag or more than half a pack of mentos for lunch.

For reasons I still haven’t quite worked out, we didn’t even take a backpack with us, resulting in me carrying a black plastic bag full of sandwiches, drinks and sun cream.

Since it had been raining that morning, I’d brought an umbrella. And with the sun God slowly turning my skin into his Sunday morning bacon, we sacrificed style for practicality and hiked the whole way with our portable shade device.

Both the well-equipped hikers and the well-acclimatised locals stared at us with disbelieving looks as we huffed, puffed, sweated and dragged each other across the island as fast as our burning lungs would take us.

The endless path of nothingness

It might only be 8 km, but at 4100 meters above sea level, wearing jeans under a fiercely hot sun, carrying a ridiculous plastic bag in one hand that seemed to get heavier and heavier even as we slowly consumed the contents, with an umbrella and struggling Laura in the other hand, and it seemed more like 80 km.

I’m not sure what we’d expected, but the island is a surprisingly barren place. I guess after the verdant beauty of the northern tip, we imagined the hike would be equally pretty, with trees, flowers, wildlife and indigenous communities to pass through.

The reality couldn’t be more different; it’s basically an endless path over some very rocky mountains with nothing to see apart from even more steep bits coming up ahead and an admittedly great view of the lake.

And the indigenous communities turned out to be unusually frequent tolls where they charge you to go to the next section of the island.

It’s kind of sad that they’ve resorted to making money from tourists that way. In the end I was so fed up with it, that I stormed past the final one shouting in my finest Inca warrior voice “No more!”

5 minutes late

Despite trying our best to do the 3 hour hike in 2 hours, and despite me running ahead in the last 15 minutes to ask the boat to wait just 5 minutes more for Laura to arrive, they left without us.

Fortunately, there was another boat leaving 45 minutes later that takes late passengers. If only we’d known that at the start, we might have actually enjoyed a walk rather than struggled our way across the island.

Sick for a week

It rained insanely hard that evening, with the 4 hour drive back to La Paz taking nearly 6 because of flooding of such biblical proportions, the roads had literally turned into rivers.

There were several moments when I thought we’d have to abandon the car and stand on the roof, but fortunately we eventually made it back.

We arrived exhausted, sun burned, hungry and slightly stressed, but glad to have finally crossed lake Titicaca and the Isla Del Sol off the list.

Bolivia wasn’t exactly turning out to be the most relaxing country I’ve visited. And to top it all off I spent the final week feeling very sick. I have no idea why, but can’t help thinking I picked up something in one of the several hygienically challenged ‘toilets’ on the Isla Del Sol.

Still, next it’s Machu Picchu. What could possibly go wrong there?