La Isla-A beautiful, magical place.

The island is about 2 hours away from Copacabana by boat, and it´s incredibly easy to arrange transportation too and from the island. There are about 2500 full-time residents, and they survive by agriculture, fishing, and these days, tourism.

There are no cars on the island. There are no roads. There are very well used and somewhat maintained trails, and burros and llamas seem to be the primary movers of goods.

We got to play in an ancient city and touch the stone that features prominently in the Inca creation myth. The sun and the moon came from the lake, you see, and the lake is called Lago Titicaca, or Titikarka, because “ti” means puma, or cat, and “karka” means rock, and the famous rock with the face of the puma is next to the face of god, which is next to the nooks where the sun and moon were found. Surely that makes total sense. It was all gorgeous.

The hike from the north end of the island to the south involved climbing over peaks as high as 13,350′, and although on a trail, was still a tough hike. I´m so very glad we left the bikes in Copacabana! As we were leaving, we saw three european bike tourists unloading their bikes on the dock at the south end of the isla.

Now, we had just run to catch our boat, and somewhat misjudged just how far above the dock we were. We ran down, and down, and down, and down, and down, and down, and down some more. My heart broke for their backs, as there was Absolutely No Way to ride anywhere until you got to the top of the island. They had to haul their bikes up an incredibly long, steep set of stairs. Long hike at least 2k, 500 feet sort of long. Bummer.

Anyway, I am so glad to have seen it, and we will post pictures as soon as we can.