Island of Sun - You bet I wanted to see where sun was born

Island of the Sun is a beautiful little island on lake Tititaca where Incas and some of the older cultures believed Sun was born. You get there by a pleasant 2 hour boat ride from Copacabana. And then we were there...

We were lucky to find a cute new hostel with a room overlooking the water. It even came with ¨cama matrimonial¨ (matrimonial bed) - nice feature during your honeymoon. Normal rooms offer beds smaller than an ordinary twin - can you imagine that with our height and size? Matrimonial is about the size of American FULL bed - still not the KING that we normally ask for in the States but on this trip it is just perfect. After a nice lunch overlooking the lake I was anxious to go and explore the mythological place...and we went... only James thought that we were going to explore the ruins on the southern part of the island (close to our hotel) and the place I wanted to explore was on the northern tip. Instead of the 15 minute walk we hiked 4 hours well reminded that the Sun was still well present at its birthplace.

The ruins and rock formations were quite nice however without a good guide we probably have missed out on more spacial stories about the place... Que pena. We missed another thing... the only boat that travels between northern and southern part of the island. Luckily (or so we thought) I met a local family that was also enjoying the ruins. The father was happy to offer us a ride back on on a their boat for a small fee.

Quite happily we boarded the boat with them as we were short on water, James was getting quite hungry (bad boy skipped his soup and potatoes at lunch) and we were tired. It was a cute adventure as James assisted the local man with the boat take off and I interacted (mostly smiled back and forth) with the rest of the family. Things seemed to be perfect, but not for long. Storm was coming our way and in minutes the lake developed waves that were becoming bigger and bigger. Fortunately for us - seasickness does not normally get us. The women of the family were not so blessed. As the wife was starting to feel sick we were getting close to our port. We were told that because of the large waves it will be impossible for our boat to stop there and that instead we will approach the island on the western side. James seemed to think that there was another port close to the hotel there and we assumed that this was were were going to be dropped off. Don´t ever assume!

We were dropped off next to a cliff and told that our place is right on the other side of it and we should just try to climb it. The family took off right away - the women and the baby were not feeling well at this point and we...started climbing. After a few seconds I called off this attempt.

It was insane! We are no rock climbers, we did not know the area, had no gear - it was no time or place to feel brave... So we decided to walk the rocks along the water until the hill gets less steep. It was a good decision as we passed a lot of bones and full dried up animals that obviously also did not agree with the hill.

It was about sunset when we got to some stepped fields that we started crossing. This is when a dog showed up - the annoying barking thing was actually an encouragement that we were getting closer to some kind of inhabited place. We followed him. Only to be met by an older men with a machete in his hands. As we just passed a small plot of coca James was super quiet. I naively did not see the coca and just said hi to the man and explained that we were dropped off by a boat... The older man smiled and just pointed us a way up. We kept on hiking. Finally James noticed what appeared to be some trail in the distance... Not only has my husband an awesome eye, a great sense of orientation, but also nerves of steal for putting up with my last minute adventure planning... Thirsty , hungry, and exhausted we made it back to town using headlamps that we luckily always carry in my back pack. The dinner that night in the only open establishment was delicious ... or at least it seemed so.