Copacabana & La Paz

I treat myself to a day´s "rest" in Copacabana to recover from the border "incident" ! Copacabana is a town on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. It´s the annual festival, so it´s very, very busy and I end up sharing a room with a lovely Japanese girl (lucky me !). Not so lucky was the drunk guy who repeated to try and get in our room at 3am, he kept coming back as he was sure we were in his room !

People waiting to see the "Virgen de Copacabana"

The best bit was the evening trip to see the "Virgen de Copacabana", the star of the festival, literally hundreds and hundreds of Peruvians & Bolivians queued the whole night in the dark (and cold) to pay their respects and leave presents, incredible devotion (picture above). They had a tradition of breaking glass bottles against the cliff face, at the end of 7 days the pile of broken glass was above the waterline !  how do clean that up ? In the basement of the cathedral the tradition (apparently) was to draw a picture with candle wax of what you wished for, I saw endless crudely drawn cars and houses !

The day I rode to La Paz was the best day yet for motorcycle touring, a superb road with fantastic mountain scenery and with actual bends in it ! There was a ferry crossing and I got talking with two Argentinian motorcycle tourists (the first I´d seen since Lima !!), I picked up some useful facts about South Bolivian roads, as they had been down to Uyuni (but had not crossed the salt flats, the "Salar de Uyuni").

I arrive La Paz in good time, the view of the city from "El Alto" (from where the road winds down) is breath taking ! I´m not so impressed when I´m told on arrival it´s just about to be "Independence Day" (10 days after Peru), and everything will be shut for 4 days (a little unlucky !), I have a large shopping list of things I realise I need (like tyre levers !). Still, I enjoy the bands and marches that take place for the first day or two.