Copacabana

Good day to you all. Writing to you, after a lengthy absence, from Cusco (Q´osko in Quechua), Peru, where we`ve been hanging out for about a week. Fonz parted ways with us last night - he is currently taking some lengthy bus rides to Santa Cruz, where he will catch a flight to Sao Paulo and remain in Brazil for a few days before returning to SA. So from here on out the Three Gringos are the Two Gringos, although Fonz is heading to the heart of Gringo Land, The United States (between Belgium and France).

There are many reasons why we have not blogged in a while. The first is that we were on a 5 day trek to Machu Picchu, and thus we were out of contact. This is a particularly compelling reason. Another is that we have been too busy enjoying this amazing city, and simultaneously celebrating a few birthdays - first we had Alex´s birthday, and secondly we had the combined birthday of Fonzie and Mandela, who agreed to have a joint party for the sake of convenience. Anyway, let us get on with the blogging.

We left La Paz in the afternoon, on a bus headed for Lake Titicaca. After numerous breakdowns, tire changes and obnoxious Israelis (I must take a minute to explain something - although I am positive that there are many many wonderful people from Israel, the overwhelming majority of Israelis we have met - and there have been quite a few - have fallen woefully short of being decent people: loud, incredibly rude, disinterested and disrespectful are just some of the qualities we have encountered repeatedly), we arrived at the shores of the gigantic lake.

For those of you about to pipe up and recall your high school geography lesson with Mrs. Manson, let me interject and explain that Lake Titicaca is NOT the highest navigable lake in the world, since Peru and Chile have higher ones. Manson was wrong. However, it is massive, and appears to be more like an ocean than a lake, and it is really high up (3900m), and it does have a funny name. After taking a short ferry across part of the lake, and then another bus, we finally arrived in Copacabana. We fumbled around the town square for a while, and then followed a local boy to his family´s hostel. We then set out about the bustling town, the streets lined with buzzing bars and artesans selling all kinds of things, many tourists, Rastas, and the ever-present ¨Trust-a-farians¨ - rich white kids with Trust Funds and Dreadlocks. After declining many tempting dinner offers from restaurant salesmen on the street, we finally gave in and accepted what turned out to be The Best Deal on The Planet. For R22, we got a cocktail, a large vegetable soup to start, access to the salad bar, a main meal of trout and vegetables (the lake is full of delicious large trout), and a dessert of our choice. I challenge anyone reading this to find the equivalent quality meal for cheaper. After dinner, we were rather tired and so we headed back to our hostel to get some rest.

The next day we decided that we should see the lakeshore, since we had arrived at night and hadn´t gotten the chance to see it. We had some more trout at the shore and then, embarrasingly, rented a giant swan paddle boat and set our sails (swan paddles) for the other side of the Lake, in Peru. Our mission ended prematurely, when we realised that the lake is 190km in length. We thus decided it would be wiser to hang around the shores and eat trout. Trout are freshwater fish, and have underwater weapons, so don´t you go too near the trout.

Copacabana is a town full of character - in the early mornings the fish market turns into an insane place where everyone attempts to buy the best of the morning catch to be ready to serve by lunchtime; at the famous cathedral (a stunningly beautiful building), the priests bless people`s cars by pouring champagne on them and lighting firecrackers close to their petrol tanks (those naughty priests, always fooling around); at the lakeside you can watch large Andean women balance on very small fishing boats, bringing in the catch. One of the drawbacks of the town, a rather serious one, is that there are no ATMs, and no one accepts credit cards. So, while there are plently of wonderful handmade necklaces and bracelets to buy, not many of the tourists actually have the cash to buy them. Its a shite state of affairs, both for the tourists and for the locals, and it boggles the mind why no one has thought to remedy it. There is no shortage of fake dollar bills though, and for a mere R15 you can buy a wad

of $100 bills, since this is considered a good luck token.

We spent our evenings by the lakeside, watching some spectacular sunsets and sipping some spectacular(ly bad) honey flavoured beer. We spend our nights at the local restaurants and bars, eating too much trout and paying far too little money for it. At a nearby restaurant, we encountered The Worst Waiter in the World, a man who sat watching TV while an entire restaurant was waiting for something, and when you got his attention he would get up and shout at a younger waiter, only to return to picking his nose and playing with his infant child, who he brings to work everyday. After five days in Copacabana, we felt we had gotten everything it had to offer, and decided to head on out to Peru.

To read of our experiences in Cusco, read the next blog, hopefully coming to you within the next few hours. Thats right, its a blog omnibus today!

To see more photos of Copa, check em out at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/steveo.zogg/Copacabana