Isla Del Sol, Bolivia

Isla Del Sol or “Island of the Sun” is where the first Inca’s were said to have lived (Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo) after breaking free from the Northern Chavin culture and moving south. We took a 2 hour boat over to the island at 8 AM and were hiking the island by 10 AM. Circling the island takes about 6 hours, is 12 km’s and goes up and down various hills, which reaches a highest elevation of 4200 m. It was a beautiful day and so we took beautiful pictures. There were so many stairs up, up and more up along the spine of the island, but this was great practice for the Inca Trail which reaches the same elevation and is known for its thousands of stairs. Along the hike we saw some famous Inca ruins, the Sacred Rock and reached the other side of the island by 4:30 PM. We traveled down multiple sets of stairs before reaching an area with hostels and restaurants, where we were greeted by a 10 year old boy entrepreneur who convinced us to stay at his hostel. He even took us to our room took our money, wrote down our passport information and signed us in. It had gotten very cold and we were tired and so we both took a quick nap before supper (I napped in my toque). Then we hiked back up, up and more up the stairs to eat at a restaurant over looking out at the sunset. A storm was rolling in, so there was no sunset but the view was still amazing and a three course meal for $7 each by candlelight is worth the hike even minus the sunset. The next morning we were back on the boat back to Copacabana. They filled the boat so full we were all very nervous that the boat would capsize. The boat was being rocked by the waves and so the lady next to us had to stand the whole way to deal with her sea sickness. We made it to shore though and were off to the bus station for our 10 hour bus ride to Cusco.