Bolivia to Peru - Floating Islands, Lake Titicaca and Whistling Llamas

There isn't much to say about Potosi other than it is high. If you walk to fast you run out of breath. Most people go to visit the mines. We decided not to, as they sound horrendous. The miners work in awful conditions and most die about ten years after starting working in them from the bad air quality. You have to climb through tiny tunnels and sign a waiver to say it is okay if you die. We stayed a night, took some pictures and then went onto Sucre.

Getting dinner at the market in Potosi

Sucre is a beautiful town. We planned on chilling out there, maybe putting up the blog and visit a museum or two. Then Niamh spotted a job opportunity, so manys the time was spent fretting over a CV and cover letter. We managed to take a wander around the town and splashed out on our second purchase of souvenirs of the trip, some lovely embroidered cushions and llama socks (the mate cup in Argentina was the first).

We visited a textile museum (Museo Textil Indigena), which had displays of fabric and outfits worn by the Jalq'a and Tarabuco people. Niamh loved it and has written up a post in Tales from a Teapot.

The next stop was Copacabana on the shores of lake Titicaca (feel free to giggle here!). We arrived at Copacabana early enough and started looking for a hostel. We tried a few places and settled on one called Residential Paris. Mostly because we thought it was half Irish owned and had wifi from 6 a.m until 11 p.m. It turns out the cafe downstairs was half Irish owned and was not part of the hostel and wifi was from 6 p.m and didn't work most of the time. This was a town wide problem though, one of the wifi companies crashed for the majority of the time we were there. Not a problem unless your trying to send a job application, grrr. The hostel was grand though, the staff were lovely. We were a staggering four floors up, which doesn't sound much but at this altitude it takes it out of you a bit.

The first day we arrived, we went out for a bite to eat in this nice restaurant which served an amazing trout. It was one of the nicest meals we had in South America. Good job Bolivia.

The next day, Niamh was busy on the laptop typing like a monkey writing Shakespeare. After delivering a beautiful sonnet, we went down to the Irish cafe called El Condor Y El Aguila Cafe (The Condor and The Eagle), which became our haunt. We bumped into a few Irish people, including a couple from near The Bell in Blanch. Niamh used to do Irish dancing with their daughter's friend. The coincidences never cease. We went to a hotel to watch the Ireland Scotland game, but lets not speak of that!

We decided we needed to do something touristy so we climbed Cerro Calvario. It was not a hard climb, although it is quite steep, but it was tough in the altitude. It was well worth it, with beautiful views over the town. We done as the locals do and bought some beer to drink while watching the boats on the lake down below. It was very idyllic, except for the taste of the beer. The penchant for sweet things in South America also exists in the world of beer and it is not a positive development.

Niamh buying the beer

Emmet drinking the beer

We had pretty much exhausted the list of things to do at this stage, other than get the boat out to Isla del Sol. So that is what we did. We booked the tour for the following morning. It is an island on the lake of Titicaca, which the Inca's had set up some settlement on. Originally the locals had gone there to escape the wrath of the Inca warriors. But determined and as organised as the Inca's were, they eventually prevailed and took the island and it's inhabitants as they had so many times before. This history is not factually correct,Emmet has decided this is what happened though, who's to judge!

There were a few different options to see the island but we decided to get dropped off on the north end and walk the 3 hours to the south.  It was tough enough in parts, some of the island rising to 4000 metres high. But it was completely worth it. We stopped off first at this small long abandoned settlement and had lunch looking out over the lake. You couldn't really pick a finer spot to munch into a banana cake. The tank satisfied for the time been we made tracks again, out onto the southern path. Obviously there isn't much you can say, other than it was once again another beautiful place in South America and we will let the photos do the talking instead.

Irish coloured boats!

Hippies camping by the beach

When we got to the southern village, we started to look for a restaurant called Los Velles that the Irish guy who owned the cafe had told us about. We walked through the village, which was really nice and followed the signs which sent us off through a forest. We walked up to it and it had great views over the lake with a few donkeys in the garden, which Emmet got to know while waiting for his food.

The guy who owned the place was lovely and we went with the recommended dishes by our Irish coffee man. The trout and vegetarian pizza. I know, vegetarian pizza, sound fairly rubbish but it was the nicest vegetarian food I had ever tasted. That said, we ordered our food at 2.20 and when it arrived out at 3.30 we were a bit anxious as we had a 20 minute walk to the boat which left at 4. So this only leaving us 10 minutes to eat our two dishes was a bit of a rush. We ended up leaving with half the pizza in our hands. Road pizza, it's nearly as good as road beer. Nearly. When he brought the food out, you could tell he was a little stressed as he knew we had to leave in a few minutes. But he had cooked up two amazing meals on a remote island which has no electricity. Not bad sir, not bad at all.

We paid our bill and walked/ran down the hill to the harbour. We made it with time to spare and were able to start digesting. A successful day out. We got the boat back and spent the night watching movies. Thankfully our computer was fully charged as the electricity went in the whole town early and didn't come back on that night. The next stop, Peru.

We had a fairly painless border crossing and arrived into Puno, also on the banks of Lake Titicaca. On the bus we got approached by a man called Fernando who owned a hostel called Intikilla. The pictures looked good, it was a decent price and he offered free transfer, so we decided to take him up on the offer and check out the place. It was lovely, the nicest accommodation we have stayed in. He put us in a the suite, which meant we had our own sitting room, bathroom, kitchen (disclaimer, the kitchen only had a sink and some presses, and a bit of a smell, so it was more like a glorified room with a sink and a stink) and of course a bedroom, with three beds. We don't need three beds, but we got them anyways! We had a lot of fun watching films on the laptop in our sitting room, attempting to drink Peruvian wine, which I would not recommend anyone try unless they first have their taste buds severed off. We also refrained from the local delicacy, see picture below!

Our bus getting a lift across the lake

 

We were very touristy in Puno. We first visited the ancient ruins of Sillustani where nobility were buried in massive towers.

Can you see the puma/lion face?

Whistling llama

On the way home we made an unexpected stop to a Peruvian family, which Niamh has written about in Tales from a Teapot.

The next day we went out to the floating islands called Unos. The people built islands made of reeds in the middle of the lake to escape the Incas (sound familiar! You can see where Emmet's confusion arose). There are 75 islands still in existence with several families living on each. They have to anchor the island down by driving steaks attached to ropes into the ground below the lake. This also means they can move the island by taking up the stakes and paddling! The family on the island we visited were lovely. They showed us inside their house, dressed us up in their traditional clothes and sang as we were leaving. We bought a beautiful hand embroidered wall hanging off them before getting on a boat made of reeds (called the mercedes benz!) to bring us to the next island. We were a bit peckish and they happened to have a restaurant so we ordered some trout. We received the freshest meal we have probably ever eaten. They went to the side of the island, caught a trout each and brought them in and cooked them. It was delicious. There are only a few photos here cause, em, you may see a pattern here, but Niamh plans to write up a post on Tales from a Teapot.

We bought the blue one!

Getting the reed boat across the lake

Dinner!

That evening we were stalking people on facebook when we got a message from Jerry and Aisling, who happened to be in Puno too. It was also Aisling's birthday eve. They managed to entice us from our suite lair, not much else would have! We met them for some pizza in a great place called Pizza e Pasta, or something like that, and then went for a few beers in a rock bar.

After getting to see Jerry and Aisling again we headed onto Arequipa the following day. It's a really nice place and we stayed in The Flying Dog hostel. It was a really nice place and the staff were great.

The main thing to do there is go and see Colca Canyon. It's the second biggest one in the world, impressive, right.....we didn't bother. Instead we chilled. After a hectic few weeks Arequipa was our place to eat (we had a potato dish in a place called Hatunpa, yummy, do not pass through Arequipa without stopping in here, forget the canyon!), drink coffee and recharge in preparation for Cuzco.

Bolivia - Llamas, Lakes and Salt Flats

We were up early the next morning and headed out to the jeep after breakfast. We were joined on the tour by two Belgian girls, Isabelle and Caroline. They were lovely and we all got on really well over the trip. 

The first day we travelled through rough terrain but it was rough for the majority of the trip anyway. There were some spectacular views of multi-coloured mountains and jagged rock formations. We also saw plenty of llamas, something which was to be a very familiar sight over the next few days.

We stopped off at a little village where Porfi, the cook who came with us, made us lunch. The food was great, she can really cook up a feast.

We had a lot of driving the first day, and our next stop after lunch was ruins of an old silver mining village, which has been abandoned. We passed by more spectacular mountains and plenty of wildlife, including birds called Huallata, more rheas and a vizcacha, which is a rabbit like animal.

Then we got back on the road to make it to our camp before dark. After several hours, we arrived at Quetena Chico, which was to be our home for the night. We got ourselves sorted in our room, our beds had many, many blankets as it gets very cold at night. We had a nice meal and a chat before heading to bed.

The following morning we headed off  early. We were going to skip going to see laguna verde, a normal stop on the tour, as it is not green as the name suggests but brown, and far away, which freed up more time for walking about to take photos. So Niamh was sold.

Froy and Porfi

Our jeep also had to do this

We made our way to the snowy topped mountains and onto Lago Hedionda, which was a beautiful but smelly sulphur lake.

We then stopped at Kollpa Lago for a snowball fight with the other jeeps!

We stopped at hot springs where we went for a dip with great views. There was also a friendly baby llama which Emmet hugged.

We then visited some Geysers, no not the English type, the ones that bubble and spray steam out of the ground. It was at a really high altitude, well over 4000 metres.

That night we stayed in Hauyllajo. Sometimes they have as many as 120 jeeps pull up and everyone stays there. It was a nice spot and later Froy, our driver, brought us out to Laguna Colorada, a beautiful red lake to see flamingos. After, we went back and sat around playing cards before heading to bed.

The following morning we went to see Desierto de Siloli which is a place where there is a bunch of unusually shaped rocks. So we pulled up there for a while and took a few photos and then kept going. There were more flamingos to be seen, you see.

Our next stop was the beautiful reflective lake called Laguna Honda.

A Vicuna

We pulled up to this lake which had a "hotel" beside it which was 90 US Dollars a night. It didn't look much and I'm certainly glad we were not paying those prices. On the plus side there were lots and lots of flamingos and these ones were relatively tame compared to the last lot that started to fly away as soon as they saw us pretty much, which didn't make for fantastic photos. What did make for fantastic photos were these tamer flamingos and Emmet's stealthy movements and fleetness of foot around where the flamingos were feeding, as he almost danced from mud flat to mud flat. At times it was even hard to tell him apart from them as he camouflaged himself amongst these elegant creatures of flight, particularly when he stood on only one of his incredibly skinny legs. Thankfully none of the flamingos had a camera, so detection of Emmet was still possible, if only just. Flintmingo one might say. He was able to capture some great shots. Too many as Niamh was to tell him, which was quite rich as she has probably taken five thousand pictures of some plant or chair in the time it took to write this.

A very graphic sign

So after some select photo editing, we moved on. Before we got to Uyuni, we stopped off at a beautiful lake called Laguna Negra with some more rock formations, had lunch and saw a mouse.

When we got back on the road we soon stopped again to see more rocks. Thank god, because we were all a bit concerned at that point that we just hadn't seen enough rocks. And this place was rocktastic. In fact, it is a place called The Valley of the Rocks. Sorted, right. When we got out, we climbed up the first bunch of rocks only to see a field of rocks. Like a huge field, massive, it went on for miles, except this huge field had rocks. To be honest, it was really cool. It looked amazing, so many different shapes and sizes. Emmet wanted to go climb lots of them but Niamh was having none of it. She had seen all the rocks she could handle for one day. So it was off to Uyuni.

Finally got a picture of a llama with pink ears staring at the camera!

Llama Crossing!

When we arrived at the outskirts, we were quite shocked at how run down the place was. We had heard it was a bit of a kip and we have seen many dodgy looking places on our travels to date. And plenty in South America but this place stole the show. There was rubbish absolutely everywhere. When we got into the town itself, it wasn't much better. You would see people just open their front door and throw their rubbish onto the street, which just piled up with the rest of it. The road were completely in disrepair, you often had to drive on the opposite side of the road as some parts were that bad. Zero sense of pride for your home was clearly the attitude here. We understand that it is a poor country, but this is a town that has many tourists come through it every year, so there would be a certain amount of money floating about. I just can't understand how people would want to live like that but there you go. We did get to see a carnival parade though.

Later that evening we went out to a part of the salt flats to see the sunset. We started to take some photos and then stood there watching the sun go down. It was really nice. Well except for these two Asian tourists, a father and son, who decided to walk out into the water right in front of a line of people, including us of course, ready to take photos as the sun hit the horizon. So we began to shout at them to move so we could all enjoy it and have great shots, without two silhouettes in the middle. Muppets!

 

The following morning we got up at 4 something, I don't even remember as we just rose at the alarm and time did not compute at this point. We got ourselves fed and into the jeep and headed out to one of the salt hotels for the sun rise. It is a small hotel made out of salt on the salt flats. When the sun stared to rise and we started to warm up a little we started taking the stereotypical photos. They were pretty cool though and sure when in Rome and all that. After a bite to eat and a few cups of hot coffee, we walked out a bit further into the salt flats to take more photos. We got some great shots and we were all pretty happy with ourselves.

We headed back to the hostel in Uyuni and had lunch, said our goodbyes to the girls and made our way to the bus station to get the bus to Potosi, the highest city in the world.