Copacabana

Copacabana was a refreshing change from La Paz as it is on a lake large enough to remind me of the ocean which I miss and haven't seen in 5 weeks. It was also nice because the air here didn't make you think you were sucking on a car tailpipe. We arrived on Saturday and which was just at the end of some sort of festival. I couldn't really figure out what it was, but it did involve blessing any sort of motor vehicle. There was a huge line of cars dressed up waiting to be blessed by a priest with holy water and in other parts of the town they were breaking bottles of liquor on the bumper similar to the way the christen ships. With the way they drive and the conditions of the roads in Bolivia I would have my car in that line as it couldn't hurt.



The next day we decided to take a walk along the shore of Lake Titicaca to the Virgin in the Cave. After walking through was could only be described as a garbage dump on the outside of town, which didn't make sense as they burn all their garbage in town, we started walking through some beautiful country side. After a while we finally got to the Virgin in the Cave, which was a Virgin Mary statue in an semi-cave in the side of a rock cliff. Similar to the festival in town there were people spraying the rocks with liquor and chipping of pieces of the rock to take with them. Nothing like pouring some liquor out for their homeboy Jesus for a little luck in the upcoming year.

We got back to the room and had a little rest after the walk only to be woken by a small fire right behind our room. Apparently it was intentional as they were burning garbage including all sorts of plastic, clothes and bascially anything else. I'm not saying this is wrong, just different, but it I did worry about the whole place catching on fire so we did the only sensible thing and went to dinner.

Monday we took the 12 hr bus to Cusco and unfortunately had to take it in the day as there were no night buses.