Lake Titicaca

Another bus trip, this time to Puno, Peru on Lake Titicaca. We decided to take a tourist bus, even though it took longer than a normal bus, we got to get out and stretch our legs every hour/hour and a half or so and see interesting sights we probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. When we arrived in Puno and got to our hostel we were VERY disappointed. The town was a city and it was very dirty and the lake was not as spectacular as we had heard. Our hostel was dingy, our room had a strange musty smell, the closet smelled like moth balls, but at $22/night for two people, I suppose you get what you pay for. We signed up to go see the floating islands further out in the lake the next day. We then went to a little pizzeria for dinner, which was good, but needed salt. When we returned to the hostel, I started to feel sick and basically spent the entire night in the bathroom. Needless to say we didn't make it to the islands that morning. I felt better later, and I figured out that the pizza probably triggered my stomach to make too much acid again...
Anyway, we went on the afternoon trip to the islands, not as extensive, but we decided an all day trip to these "islands" would have been too long. The islands are set up on reeds, with reeds layered over 3 feet deep. It was neat to see that all the houses are made of reeds and their boats and they are able to have fires and little garden on top of the reeds. It was pretty neat but I didn't need a whole day to appreciate it.
After our litle trip we ate dinner (thankfuly uneventful) then went to the bus station where we caught our bus to Copacabana. After we got to the Peruvian/Bolivian boarder, John and I, as the only adventurous Americans had to go through a long process and pay $140 to get our Bolivian visas (it says $135 on the stamp, so I think we got over charged, but I wasn't about to argue with the civil guard over $5). Once we did that we found our luggage that had been brought across the boarder via bicycle (it was pretty funny) then loaded into the "bus", which was really more oif a large van than a bus and rode on down to Copacabana, Bolivia.
Bolivia is a lot prettier and less sketchy than everyone thinks it is. Copacabana had the nice little shoreline (still with trash, but you can't ask too much at once) and little boats and mountains in the distance. We stayed at a really nice hostel, which was more like a hotel with great views. The next day after sleeping in we took a tour to the Isla del Sol where we took some great pictures and got a good workout climbing up some brutal stairs. We watched the native women going down to the shore and digging up dirt then carrying it up all those stairs and wondered why they were doing that. A little further up the trail we saw the native men mixing the dirt that the women brought all the way up from the shore into concrete and building a new house or school or something like that. I noticed when we returned to the boat that there were donkeys by the shore doing nothing but trying to eat seaweed and I wondered why they weren't carrying the dirt up. Oh well, to each their own. Overall, if I had to do Lake Titicaca again, I wouldn't bother with Puno and I would just stay in Copacabana. I really hope we can put pictures up soon as there are some great ones. I know I'm a little behind on the blogs, but forgive me as finding good internet that lets me put up posts this long is difficult!
Hope everyone is doing well, love and miss you all!
<3
Lauren

PS. Check John's blog (link at bottom of page) for links to other peoples' blogs about their experiences in Titicaca, they're hilarious!