titicaca-copacabana
Lake Titicaca is the highest lake in the world, also the birth place of the Incas. In the lake was the Island of the Sun where the first Inca was born. From the Satellite, this lake might look like a puma which the Inca people worshipped.
Titicaca originally means Gray Puma. Anyway, Copacabana is a small town in the Bolivian side of the lake (the lake was shared by 70% Peru and 30% Bolivia). Not a very interesting town but it was the base for exploring Island of the Sun and Moon.
You can take a mini-bus from the Cemetery area in La Paz. It's cheap (16B, US$2.5). But you need to get off half way and take a little ferry. I met A- and F- from Switzerland, they are walking towards our little ferry.
Our Mini bus also need to take the ferry. They separate the passengers from the bus because they don't want any Titanic incident.
We then need to drive a little bit more. It took us 3 to 4 hours to reach Copacabana.
The view looking form La Cupula, where I stayed for the night before I went to Island of the Sun.
The word Copacabana means beautiful (a simple meaning for a complicated word).
I rent a water bike from the beach (US$ 2). The sunset was transcendent.
Cerro Calvario is the hill on the northern side of the town, it supposed to be the best place to watch sunset. But I neither have the time nor stamina to walked up the hill on that day. Anyway, riding the water bike had made me run out of breath (BTW, the lake was 4 km above sea level).
Looking back at the town from my water bike. It's surreal.
I tried to enjoy the last moment of the sunset. Everything was real in a not very realistic way.
The next day I came back from Isla Del Sol, I climbed up the Cerro Calvario. It took me 45 minutes to go up, 10 minutes to come down. The view was good, and there was no fence on the top.
Looking down from Cerro Calvario, you can see the whole town (using the panorama feature of my Canon A5 digital camera)
The Cathedral was built by the Spanish. It has a Maria statue in a small chapel. There was some kind of miracle happened to the Maria statue. They also have a bus blessing ceremony near the cathedral (around 11am-noon).
When I asked the local people what religion they believe in, they said it was a little bit of Catholic, a little bit of folk religion. But Catholic is not a cocktail, it is not very mixable, I felt that their true religion is the traditional Andean religion. There are many cross at the top of the mountains, but do they represent the Catholic Cross or the Southern Cross which was worshipped by the original natives? I went back to La Paz on a tour bus (20B, $3 US).