We set out from La Paz on a public bus heading for the border. Apart from a lady who was listening to her radio on full volume without earplugs, the journey was pleasant passing through farmland with llamas, fat lambs, cows & grain crops being harvested into sheaves. We arrived at Lake Titicaca after about 2 hours & crossed the water by small boats to a peninsula & then drove by bus to Copacabana. Our bus with our bags went by barge. It is a beautiful day & the Lake looks magnificent. It is a huge lake – at 8550 sq km, it is bigger than Flinders Island. There are reeds all along the foreshore – like the ones that Thor Heyerdahl used to build the Rah and Rah 2.
Crossing the border from Bolivia to Peru was comparatively painless despite the large number of people crossing.
We are now in Peru. Our 4 hour bus ride to Puno took us through more farmland with stone walls & terraced hillsides. Farming appears to be a manual process with women harvesting potatoes & stooking wheat, oats, barley & broad beans.
Lake Titicaca #2, Bolivia, 4 May 2012
We arrived in Puno on the south western shores of Lake Titicaca in the late afternoon and went for a walk around the old city centre where once again, the evidence of Spanish colonial influence is abundantly apparent.