#86 - Isla del Sol

28/04/2011 (posted 29/04/2011)

Decided to go for a nice excursion to the local attraction, Isla del Sol.
It was a place of great importance for the Incas, who believed it was where the sun god created the world or something like that.

The only way to get there is by motorboat, and the one I went on was possibly the simulataneously loudest and slowest one in existence. I could have swam there quicker.

But eventually I got there and it was absolutely idyllic - the views out onto the Lake really shows it for how massive and incredible it is. The standard thing to do is walk from the north to the south and in doing so, see the whole of the island's beauty.
So that's what I did.

The route took me firstly to some small Inca ruins with a sacrifice table and stuff, but compared to Machu Picchu it wasn't quite up there. The path was along the highest point of the island and consequently gave beautiful panoramas and views in every direction - don't worry, an abundance of photos were taken.

I got chatting to an English guy called John and a fiery Irish woman (do you get Irish women anything but fiery?) called Alli who I had  some interesting discussions with and eventually just let her have her say as she clearly wasn't taking in any of the points I was making.
One interesting thing she did say was that there are some great places kind of near here that I should visit so that's useful to know.

It was the perfect way to spend my time on the island as I saw all of it and as I mentioned, saw some truly stunning views. The walk was 9.5km and took about 3 hours at a leisurely pace - it was also very high (around 3900m) which made it difficult to make much of a pace.

The boat ride back was similarly slow and loud but I managed to sleep a little bit to pass the time.
When I got back, I met John and his friend Simon for a few drinks and a surprisingly delicious meal - a lot of the food here is fairly bog-standard but my chicken was very good.

We then went on to the strangest place I have ever been. I can only describe the parafanalia everywhere as a cross between Poison Ivy's lair and Spiderman's ultimate fantasy with fake bunches of grapes. There were some Essex girls who had apparently been waiting over an hour for food and when we saw that the owner looked off his face on goodness knows what, we promptly left.

One annoying thing about this hostel is that the TV has CNN but in Spanish  - the others I've been to have had either BBC World or American CNN but the lack of either of these means I'll miss the Royal Wedding tomorrow which is frustrating.
I hope the whole of Britain can relax and celebrate all that is good about being British - they'll be celebrating long.

JG