Hello Bolivia

  Copacabana, Bolivia Thursday, April 14, 2016

Copacabana is a tiny town. There isn't much to do here at all except sit and look at the lake. Which granted, is beautiful and after our hectic schedule through Peru, we were glad to have some time to just sit and be and catch up with ourselves. Our first hotel despite the beautiful view from our room, turned out to be more like Fawlty Towers so we crossed over the road and checked into the hobbit hostel there. Our room here didn’t have such a great view but we did have our own little garden, a big fireplace and a decent sized, quirky room.That night we experience the most incredible storm we have ever heard. The thunder and lightning was on top of us and the building was shaking. Bryan was convinced we had had an earthquake in the night (especially when we heard there had been an earthquake recorded in Ecuador) but no, not earthquake just ferocious lightning. We woke up the next morning and it looked like it had been snowing. Out in the garden was all white. It turned out to be hailstones but as it had also become so cold, they weren’t melting and disappearing.The plan whilst we were in Copacabana was to wait for our friend Dena, the lady we had become friendly with on our Galapagos cruise and who lives in Bolivia, as she was also a swimmer and she and Bryan were going to swim in Lake Titicaca. We weren’t sure where they were going to swim yet but an idea was forming. Dena arrived on Saturday and she couldn’t believe it when we showed her a huge snowman someone had built from all the hailstones lying around. Yep this was going to make the water in the lake colder for sure. We met with a man (Genaro) whom Dena had been told by a contact she had, could help with giving boat support during the swim. Dena’s Spanish is much much better than ours and so was able to have a proper conversation with him. We enquired about the price and were shocked to discover he wanted the equivalent of £35. Not each – total! Wow what a bargain. After the £1000’s normally commanded by boats on Bryan’s other swims, this seemed way too cheap. The catch? We had to buy a taxi boat ticket for a further £2.50 each to get us out there, where his boat would meet us and bring us back. Deal done! Well the next day – Sunday, the swim went really well and you can read about that in another entry. Deena set off home again around 4pm and Bryan just went to bed to rest up. Take-away pizza & a bottle of wine in bed that night. We hadn’t been allowed to light the fire but our host had brought us a gas heater to keep warm. This place is freezing. The following day we heard from Dena – her bus had gone into a ditch on the way to La Paz and she missed her flight home. And the next one. She hadn’t arrived into La Paz until midnight and eventually got a hotel room around 1am. She was getting an early morning flight back home to Cochabamba and her family today, who must have been sick with worry last night. We were also leaving later today and hoped for better luck with our bus. Fingers crossed please. So the afternoon we spent looking for accommodation to book in La Paz and whilst sitting, reading through Trip Advisor reviews we spotted an entry which got us, and the young German couple also sitting doing similar to us in the same room, laughing out loud.A customer had complained that the dorm room they stayed in really smelled bad. The hostel owner had replied "it must have been one of the other guests". Not the response the writer was expecting we are sure. Needless to say we didn’t book there just in case. Out for lunch later and we spotted a familiar and friendly face. Lars from the top of Rainbow Mountain strolled by. We called to him and he joined us for a couple of hours and we caught up on what we had all been doing. Seems like we are heading in roughly the same direction but he had just arrived today and we were just about to leave. Promising to keep in touch we headed off to get our bus from the White Anchor at 6pm. Bolivia Hop were to take us on this next leg of the journey and onto La Paz. We had heard many stories about La Paz – some good – some terrible. We were keen to get back to a big city again too. Copacabana is just too quiet for us so bring it on – whatever 'it’ was we say.