Copacabana

A short flight to La Paz helped us avoid a dangerous (because of roads/cliffs and bad driving) and uncomfortable 12+ hour bus trip. When we arrived at the airport we took a taxi to the bus terminal and hopped on a bus to Copacabana. It was an easy 4 hour trip, that was only slightly delayed when the police realized there were two foreigners (us) on the bus and blocked the bus from leaving for 30+ minutes while having heated discussions with the driver. We think the issue was that the bus company let us board without taking down our names/passport numbers since we bought our tickets outside instead of at the ticket office. Eventually, we were on our way.
Copacabana is set on the beautiful Lake Titicaca, a very spiritual place to many Andean people who believe it’s the birthplace of the sun. It’s the highest navigable lake in the world (>12,500 feet) and massive. The town itself is a little ramshackle and not as clean as other parts of Bolivia, but we enjoyed our time here. It helped that our hotel was up on the hill with a fantastic view and we found the town had a lot of charm. The town is dominated by The Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana - a very large 16th century church famous for the Virgin of Copacabana and a major pilgrimage site for Bolivians. It’s also the go-to-place to get your car blessed and it was fun to see cars and shuttles outside the church decorated with flowers and hats be blessed with champagne or Coca Cola by the priest.
Our favorite experience here was a daytrip we took to the small village of Sampaya to do some hiking. We took a taxi to the tiny stone village with only dirt paths, then walked through farmland and over a ridge to enjoy some amazing views. After finally finding a path down to the road back to Copacabana, we flagged a share-taxi back to town. It was a beautiful day and we didn’t come across any other tourists on our hike, only some local farmers working in their fields.
We had intended to take a boat out to the Island of the Sun to hike across the island and visit Inka ruins, but an unfortunate dispute between the island’s North and South residents has essentially closed the hike down.Read more