Isla de Sol - North side

 
First some factoids about Lake Titicaca: It is at 3800m above sea level. It sits both in Bolivia and Peru and can get as deep as 135m deep. Its also cold, as. Although the origin of the name is unknown, it is believed that Titi means puma and Caca means stone (I know what you were all thinking there..). We were headed to one of the 36 islands that are on the lake: Isla de Sol. There are 2 main ports on the island, north and south. Encarna and I were spending one night in the north part and one night in the south part.

It was raining when we left Copacabana, but it made the water nice and still. The sun started breaking through as we arrived an hour and 45 min later.

one horse town

Encarna found us a place to stay while I stayed with the bags. There were only the most basic accommodations here so our room was quite spare; 2 single beds and one small table. There were shared showers/toilets available down the stairs - this is where Copacabana´s shower was out done. There were wires coming out of the shower head and they were joined with electrical tape, then the wires continued on to the light fixture. I passed on the shower - I prefer to live.

Inca ruins

Once settled in we slogged ourselves up the hill (up and down, up and down) to see the Inca ruins that were there. The sun was pounding and it was very hot when there was no wind. The most impressive of the ruins was some sort of townhouse complex (for lack of a better comparison). It sat on top of a hill overlooking a beautiful bay- these Inca sure knew how to pick their real estate! From the top of the island the lake was a deep blue and it looked like we were on the Mediteranean coast somewhere. It was so tranquil and lovely to watch the sun sparkle on the water. We really should have put sunscreen on though.

By the time we came back down the hill, my face was on fire, and my lips were swollen. I´ve never sunburned my lips before...its not pleasant.

We had trout for dinner (surprise) and after that there was not much to do - this is a very small village and we had circled it twice already, so we hung out in our room and read...it was an early night.  Perhaps the south side of the island, which was more populated, would be more lively...