Day 31, the dark virgin of the lake

We left our hostel in Puno, after we had breakfast. That included some cereal made of corn. The bus we had today, was not so luxurious as the one we had yesterday, but it was only going to be a 3 hour trip. We drove along the Titicaca lake, to the border of Bolivia. There it took a while for everyone to get their stamps, and around 12 o clock we arrived at Copacabana. The weather was really nice, and the bus stopped practically in front of our hotel. We dropped our stuff and went on our way to find some food. Not far away is the main square, and we saw that they had build three stages there. We decided to drink a beer in the sun, and about 10 minutes later a parade started! It was a little like the one yesterday in Puno, but smaller. We managed to order a small sandwich, which was lucky, because also here a lot of places were closed because of the celebration of the dark lady of the lake (the virgin candalaria, a mix of christian and traditional religion). After a while the parade was over and the dancers drank some more beer (they also drank during dancing in the parade), and the parties at the stages slowly started. It was really loud and chaotic, because the stages were very close to eachother 😅 Me and Eike went to look at the biggest stage first, but then we went to another one, where they partied a bit harder. There we drank and danced with some of the blowing instrumentalists of one of the bands. They all wanted to have pictures with us, and then other people also wanted pictures with us 😅 After a while, a lady (Sandra) who was a dancer in the parade, wanted to dance with Nina, so she did. Eike joined too and it was really fun. The bolivians can drink a lot! When it got a bit chilly the dancers went home to change into a bit warmer clothes. We met Sandra again and we went to another stage. There we danced and Nina ended up dancing with Sandra on the stage 😅 after a while we went to the third stage where it is quite possible that we were filmed and were on bolivian TV 🤭 it was quite a thing that we were there, because the singers of the bands on the stages always said something about us. And all the people who wanted to make pictures with us too. We were the only tourists partying 🤷‍♀️ after a lot of dancing and beer, we went to the hotel, but it was closed... we banged on the door, but nobody would open. We thought we had to sleep outside, but it was very cold. After 2 hours a guy came, who also was staying at the hotel. He tried knocking first, but nothing happened, so he then just pulled the roller shutter up, and we all finally got in!Read more