Copacabana - Bolivia

So, we set off for Copacabana, on the shores of lake Titicaca, early in the morning. Both Lake Titicaca and the town of Copacabana are important places in this part of South America.

Lake Titicaca is the spiritual home of the Incas and the Sun Island is the centre of their creation myth. Copacabana had been an important Inca site and was adopted (after being looted, of course) by the Spanish and Catholic church during colonial times. The church houses an idol, "The Virgin of Copacabana" which is an important pilgrimage site for Bolivia and Peru.

On the way to Copacbana we had to get off our bus and pay 50p to cross the lake (Copacabana sits on the end of a peninsular. The peninsular is owned by Bolivia, the land it is attached to is Peru, the only way to get to Copacabana from La Paz and stay in Bolivia is to cross the lake.) Meanwhile our bus was sent on a precarious looking barge. The separation of passengers from vehicles was in response to an accident some time ago, when one barge sank and some passengers were unable to escape. I have no doubt that the local economy, now having two revenue streams - plus a bunch of tourists waiting in limbo by food stalls for their slower bus - doesn't complain too much.

Bus crossing

The church in town is pretty impressive. It is huge and the whole of the end behind the altar is covered in gold plate (apart from the immediate vicinity of the idol, which is silver). In fact, there's so much stuff that some of it has to be kept outside.

External, extra crosses

One, rather curious, ability of the idol appears to be to bless new cars. Each day at noon, people with new (to them) cars queue up outside the church to get them blessed and then they buy gaudy paper decorations to cover their cars with and, for reasons that I'm not too clear upon, throw beer over them. In August, we are told, there are so many cars, mostly from Peru, that they have to park them down on the shoreline.

Get your car decorations here

Whilst the pilgrims are busy buying beer to throw over their cars (and buying trout to eat) they also seem to have taken to pedalo-ing. I'm not sure if the pedalos are blessed or not, but the people certainly seem to enjoy them. Even the Bolivia navy (yes, land-locked Bolivia does have a Navy - for the lake) has four or five - shaped like ducks for some bizarre reason.

Pedalo paradise

Altogether Copacabana and Lake Titicaca are quite special places. Away from the money changers and the tour touts at is amazingly tranquil and, therefore, we seem to have spent 5 nights in the Hotel Rosario del Lago.

Moonlit sunset

Tomorrow we depart for Peru (10 mins away) and Machu Pichu. T's main aim since we said we were going to S. America!