Back to Puno and on to Isle del Sol July 27 & 28

I decided to give the frozen hole of a city, a.k.a Puno, a second try but this time only as a one night stopping point on my way to Bolivia. My buddy Raul and I breezed through Puno on our way to Copacabana, this time the weather was warmer and let me tell you, it made all the difference, I actually mildly enjoyed the place! Who knew a good night´s sleep and a bit of heat could make a girl so happy? This little trip ended up being quite a serious undertaking and I was more than grateful for Raul´s involvement in the tourism industry because he had all of our hostels, bus, combi and boat tickets sorted out before we even left Arequipa! So from Arequipa we bused to Puno, spent one short night there, up early the next morn and on another bus to Copacabana, there was time for lunch and then off to the boat that would take us to Isle del Sol. The island is a lovely little blob of land somewhere between Peru and Bolivia in Lake Titicaca, the ¨world´s highest navigable lake¨ (though the validity of this last statement is up for debate). Once we arrived we needed to undergo the massive endeavour of trekking to our hostel. Raul was so kind as to pick the hostel located furthest up the mountain... augh... Lucky for me he is a good pal and helped carry basically everything I had (in addition to his own belongings) up the nearly countless steps that seemed to lead straight to the sun... If it weren´t for him I probably would have just laid down in the path and died, this altitude far surpassed anything I had grown accustom to in the recent weeks living in Peru... When I was finally able to drag my bones up the mountain to the hostel, I realized it was all worth it. The view from our hostel could have made me endure that climb 15 times over!