Yes, yes, and yes. If you got the gist that I was pretty over La Paz at the end of it, you wouldn’t be wrong. Leaving the city was exciting.

We got on the bus and drove what was supposed to be a 3 hour trip but ended up more like 5 to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca. You can stay here but we had heard great things about Isla Del Sol, so when we got off the bus we bought ourselves two ferry tickets, and made the 2 hour boat ride to the island.

Isla Del Sol is where the Incas believe the sun was born, and after seeing the beautiful sunrises and sunsets – it’s almost believable…almost.

We arrived at the little harbour not having booked any accommodation, and were greeted by a man yelling ‘hostel?!’ ‘Si’, we replied and we began the 20 minute uphill hike to the accommodation. You can stay closer to the water but the views from higher up are worth it. Isla Del Sol is about 3,900m above sea level so the altitude was making the hike tough. The guides ended up taking both our packs while we wheezed our way up.

We had no idea what the rooms would be like so were blown away when we were shown to our baby blue cabana, with private deck, an completely unobstructed views of the lake, surrounding snow-capped mountains and sunrise. The best accommodation so far by a long long shot.

We dropped our bags, said ‘holy shit this is awesome’ about 10 times, and then walked up to find somewhere to get a drink. We crossed over the top of the island and found a little place where we ordered a Pisco Sour and a beer and rocked on little outdoor rocking chairs overlooking the sunset on the West side of the lake.

On our way back we got pizza – which was very average, bought a bottle of red wine and a Kit Kat and watched The Revenant in bed while drinking out of the bottle. 🙂

The next morning we woke to the first light of the day creeping through our little curtains. We both got up, rugged up (it’s very chilly), and sat on our deck watching the famous sunrise as the birds, donkeys and llamas of the island also woke.

We hopped back inside and watched the day unfolding from our cosy beds until we got a little knock at the door from a very sweet lady offering us breakfast. Our limited Spanish meant we didn’t really know what we said yes to, but turns out it was eggs, bread, jam, yoghurt, and coffee. We ate this on our deck, repeating the ‘holy shit this is awesome’ line a few more times.

After breakfast we chilled a bit more then headed down to the water to get a ferry to the North of the island so we could walk the 3 hours back to where we were – the South. Buuuuuut we got there at 11.30 and the only ferry to the north was at 10.30. So we hiked the 25 minutes of steep steps back up and did our own walk. We walked out to what was one of the highest points on the island and could see sparkling blue lake and snowy mountains in all directions – the area around Isla Del Sol looks a lot like Queenstown.

We walked for about 2.5 hours and headed back for a beer and some fries. The worst fries we have ever had. They tasted like fish haha.

For lunch we got some Pringles and a Snickers-  #cleaneating – and went back to our little paradise to chill for the afternoon.

For dinner we went with Trip Advisor’s number one recommendation on the island and it paid off big time. The place was called Las Velas and it stood on its own at the Southern tip of the island. It was very small with seating room for about 15 and no electricity, so we ate stone-fired pizzas and trout by candlelight. It was so delicious, as was the bottle of red wine that went with it. From our table we watched the stunning sunset be replaced by the most stars and one of the brightest full moons I have seen in a while which lit our cobblestone path home. It was such a nice night, that capped off one of our favourite days of the trip so far.

The next morning we were again greeted with breakfast, packed our bags and headed down to the water. We ferried back to Copacabana to wait for our 10 hour bus ride through the night to Peru!