Copacabana y la Isla del Sol

The Joker group with about twelve Belgian people we kept on meeting in Peru provided me with a travel companion after Thomas had left. Eva, a lovely girl from Mortsel (near Antwerp) wanted to travel to Bolivia, too, so when we met again at Machu Picchu, we decided to travel to Copacabana together.
Copacabana is a little city at the Bolivian side of the Lago Titicaca, eight kilometers passed the Peruvian border. It is a perfect basis to do a day trip to the beautiful Isla del Sol. If you go there, take the boat to the north of the island in the morning, do the lovely eight-kilometer-walk to the south and take the boat back from there. Make sure you walk up the hill in Copacabana, too, it provides a gorgeous view on Lago Titicaca and over Copa, it is perfect to see the sunset. Copa has an impressive cathedral worth visiting and it has quite a few good restaurants where you can sit outside in a nice garden under the ever present sun. Try the 'Pico Macho', a traditional dish with spicey beef, salchicha (pork sausage), paprika and of course, chips. Order a glass of api to go with it, it is a typical Bolivian drink made from brown maize. You can take a Paqueño to go with it, too, it is a tasty Bolivian beer but there might be some misunderstandings if you ask for a Pequeño grande. The market is worth paying a visit, just to see how they sell meet, uncooled of course with tons of flies circling around, or to buy some fruits.
Eva and me stayed overnight in the south of Isla del Sol, at Don Thomas. You get a room full of flies, there is no water, nore is there electricity and the toilet, well the hole with a plank with a hole in it over it, was overfull. But we only paid 6 bolivianos (0.6 euros) and had a good night's sleep. Next day, we wanted to walk to the litlle port on the south of the island, but we miscalculated a bit and ended up having to climb rocks and doing dangerous things as the coast line was getting rockier and rockier and steaper and steaper. Then to make it even worse, it started hailing heavily and fortunately Eva managed to get a fishing boat to get over to the shore and pick us up. The port seemed to be still very far and we would never have gotten there without walking the whole way back because further on, it was impossible to walk. Quite a good adventure that was, the rowing boat back to the port.
The colectivos (little white vans for public transport) from Copacabana to La Paz do not seem to be very safe as there are several reports of tourists getting robbed on them or even kidnapped and forced at gunpoint to give their credit card's pinnumber. So, you would better take the tourist bus to La Paz, it is only 10 bolivianos (1 euro) more expensive and it is safe. There is signs up warning you for these incidents in several tourist places in Copa as well as in La Paz.