Friday, August 22, 2008

Isla del Sol - or How to loose your breath in 214 steps

(still in Arequipa, got my juggling act together, with the help of a crazy guy named Juan)

We arrived in Copacabana at night and checked in at a fairly decent random hostel. In transit, nobody cares about a hostel's atmosphere as long as the sheets are clean (it just occured to me that common-tv-rooms are to hostels what plaza's are to cities... hmm, my hostel in Arequipa doesn't have one. Probably the reason why I didn't want to stick around there and went walking the streets instead, in search of a cozy cafe). We left Copacabana the next morning for Isla del Sol, not before meeting 3 girls from ecuador at the ticket office. Also, the american girl at Corioico's hostal Esmeralda had recommended us to leave our big bags at the hostel before setting out to Isla del Sol. Definitely good advice if you get off the boat at the south side of the Isla. Oh wait, actually, she had given us that advice about Macchu Pichu. Anyway, as soon as we arrived, Dim and I set out to quickly climb the long and steep stairs in order to book a hostel before they'd all be full while Ammu waited on the grass at the pier.

When we finally reached the top of the island, out of breath, we went to find a nice lonely-planet recommended hostel. We found one overlooking the lake and the surrounding mountain tops (an awesome view). The clouds at the horizon beautifully faded into white mountain peaks. We then went down the hellish stairs again to catch Ammu. There, she started telling us she had met 2 peruvians guys who suggested to go to the north part of the island where the hostels where at sea-level. Normally, this would be valuable advice, but I think I almost strangled her on the spot. Did she have any idea how many stairs we had just climbed? The slightest idea? Besides, the idea was to walk down from the south all the way to the north of the island the next morning and come back on a boat from there to Copacabana. So no, we weren't gonna find a hostel on the north side instead. We left our bags at the pier's snack place (the owner was friendly and helpful, and put our bags together with his stock of snickers, so we knew it was safe :) and proceeded to motivate Ammu up the stairs of Isla del Sol. Looking back, it wasn't anything compared to Macchu Pichu. But we didn't know that yet.

Up there, we basically crashed on the beds, asked the friendly owner for extra blankets and started to nap a bit. Until Dim got restless and wanted to take pictures of the sunset. If he hadn't come back for this torche, I wouldn't have ended up joining him. But I'm glad I did. We walked up the island some more noticed all kinds of hostels and restaurants on the way (not to mention more snobby french girls) and set out to take beautiful pictures. A local family passed us by with their herd of llama's, sheep and donkeys. They especially use donkeys here to carry heavy jerrycans of water up the island. Dim was amused by how the different animals all just walked together in peace., like a big family. We then came back to the hostel but ammu was too tired to join us for dinner. So we dressed up warmer (it gets quite cold at night on Isla del Sol, surprise surprise) and went back to the crowded restaurant we had noticed earlier. Also, the owner's little daughter came to talk to us, showing us her english (they get it at school pretty early on) and we even ended up playing those song-accompanied-synchronized-hand-clapping passtimes. Dunno the name of that, but it's amazing that it appears in all cultures, in all languages.

The next day we walked towards the north. There weren't many people on the path, which was really nice. Less nice where the checkpoints where you had to pay every time for the preservation of this or that part of the island. The different districts don't really cooperate right now, so everyone taxes the tourists separately. The walk took about 3-4 hours along scenic landscapes. It really did feel like an Aegan island, greek or so. We bought cheap bananas on the way (don't ask the price of the tempting tempting snickers) and decided to skip the unimpressive looking ruins (for which we did pay taxes) and went down to the north pier for some lunch. That's where we bumped in the cute ecuador chicks again + an american called Jeff and all went for lunch. We had actually seen Jeff before on the boat to Isla del Sol. he was eating a sweet sweet snickers. Funny enough, he told us at lunch how he had seen us eyeing his snickers. "I would have given you some if you had asked, but you didn't, so I just ate it all myself", Jeff the teacher told us. he was a tall and strangely funny guy. We ended up going to Cuzco together. On the boat, we hit it off with the 3 girls, one of which seemed to quite like me. I was very funny on the boat, peaking into the girl's diary and using the back pages manual to read my own hand palm, which I did out loud and joked about. We arrived just in time to have a quick lunch, say goodbue to the trio and set out to Cuzco.

Tal Benisty

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