Barry Manilow woz ere (or not...)

At the Copa...Copacabana...but not THAT one! After an immense kerffuffel involving bus times leaving La Paz our journey to Copacabana on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca was finally underway. The bus had to cross the lake on some weird floating flat thing, but we arrived safe and dry after all.

You can just about see our bus in the middle of the lake

"Hooray we have made it Inca Brother!"

We arrived at Copabana (which was a bit like a Bolivian Barry Island) just in time for the Good Friday/Easter Sunday celebrations, so the small town was filled with tour busses and pilgrims from all over Bolivia, as well as tourists like us. The best view of the town was to be had at the top of a nearby mountain, so we joined the pilgrims in hiking up to the top, an also in the perilous scramble to the bottom!

The people hiked up to the top of the mountain (even really old women and men with crutches) 

to light incense and put flowers near the Catholic icons at the top

Bowler hatted lady eatin´ ice cream with a view out to Isla del Sol, 

the supposed birthplace of the Inca religion

Argh! Don´t look down

Celebrating hordes and a surprising number of duck pedalloes (duckalloes) on the lake shores

In the evening we joined the crowds and walked up to the cathedral for the Good Friday procession, which was a little bit sinister, with hooded and robed figures carrying a graphic model of Jesus´ corpse to the hill. The band played a creepy dirge and the whole procession stopped every few metres to read the Lord´s Prayer.

We didn´t follow them for very long.

As the crowds dispersed we booked ourselves on an overnight trip to visit the famous Isla del Sol, for a hike over the island and a visit to some Inca ruins.

Chincana ruins

Sacrificial table

Matt made his own Inca ruin

After a good night´s sleep we missed going down the Inca Stairs, and opted instead for a donkey filled mud path to get us to the boat launch! But here is a picture of the stairs anyway.

(not us)

The boat back to Copacabana was a bit over filled and tediously slow, but we got there eventually. The town was almost deserted now that the weekend Easter hordes had gone, so we thought we´d join them and jumped on a bus to Peru!