Forrest and Meryl do Southie: Copacbana y un mal estomago...

When I drove into Bolivia during my jeep tour, I was with a gal from California named Kat. She told me that the big joke for touristas in Bolivia is “if you don’t get sick from the water or the food than you will from the altitude…”
Well I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to get sick from the altitude, and after 4 months I like to think that I have a strong stomach, so I was betting that I would be just fine. Well I returned from Rurrenabaque and spent the night in La Paz, and I woke up the next morning to discover that I was not “just fine”. Unfortunately I had to get on a bus that afternoon to head to Copacabana. I survived the bus ride (Bolivian busses don’t have bathrooms, so long rides can be a bit nerve racking and stressful) only to get much worse the fallowing day. I decided to check myself into a Hotel, instead of a hostel so that I could enjoy the “luxury” of a private bathroom. I basically did nothing other than sleep and feel bad for the next 3 days, oye.

But on my fourth day, after consuming all of the pepto-bismol that Forrest and I brought, I rallied! I felt so good I bought myself a bus ticket to Peru and boat tickets for the fallowing day. I wandered around the town of Copacabana, which is a really nice, touristy town on the Bolivian shores of lake Titicaca. The lake is really beautiful, the shores were lined with fishing boats, tour boats, paddle boats along with the traditional reed boats that islanders have used since the time of the Incas. For my last 2 nights I switched hotels to a place called La Cupula, supposedly one of the nicer hotels in Bolivia. I thought I could splurge for it because one room only cost 18$. It was really nice, it was bar far the nicest bathroom that I have been in, in south America and I had it all to myself (i didnt realize how much i took for granted in the bathroom department until I came to Boliva, hot water and water pressure, not to mention toilet seats, dont really exisit in this country).

On my last full day in Copa I took a tour boat to the Isla del Sol (the island of the sun) which is supposedly the birthplace of Inca sun mythology. The boat ride was beautiful, you could see the Cordillera Real off to one side, and the island on the other. The boat took us to the north end of the Island first, where we were dropped off to explore for a few hours. Normally most people walk from one end to the other, it is a 4 hr walk that is supposedly pretty strenuous (the island is at about 13,000ft) I decided not to do that since I had been sick for the past 3 days. So, I walked on the trail for about an hour, went to the museam, and had a nice conversation with a little girl who lived on the island about her farm animals, before heading back onto the boat. We then went to visit the south end of the island for a bit, where I climbed the legendary “1000 steps” to get to the small village, then I went back down them. The boat ride back was warm, sunny and beautiful. Lake Titicaca is truly amazing. I wish that I could have explored more while I was there, but alas my bowels wouldn’t allow it.

Presently I am back in Peru, for my last reaming in days until the grand adventures of Southie come to an end…