16.03.08 The illusive lake

Today was our second attempt to visit Lake Titicaca, after we had to abort last week's due to illness. We left in Fiona’s car and hit the traffic, made it out of the city in fits and starts, and up to El Alto. Here things slowed both further and markedly, the area around the vast black market was chaotic, past there it barely improved. A mash up of old cars, 4x4s, trucks and buses rolled along beeping their horns and changing lanes on the deeply pockmarked four lane dust track; people constantly wandered through the traffic and policemen waved us through red lights,

Eventually, we gave up the road in favour of an as yet undiscovered short cut through the flat endless expanse of low, shabby, brick houses. On a desolate wasteland, we went past a herd of llamas sporting coloured ribbons. Llamas, hooray! We ended up in a short queue for our turn to cross through a fast flowing river in our 4x4 and escape on to what we hoped would be open road. Instead, some policemen waved a 1950s Chevvy bus past the audience and into our path, we gave way, and it promptly got stuck in the middle of the river. So that was the end of our second attempt to visit Lake Titicaca.

And so we went elsewhere: another smaller lake. On the route, we went past a man in a manicured garden rocking out playing air guitar and then headed down into the valley. It was a beautiful place marred by the crassest tourism, still at least we had a go in a pedalo. Lake Titicaca will have a wait another week. We headed back into town as the sun set; at twilight, this really is the most stunning city.