Lake Titicaca

Leaving Cusco and heading towards Lake Titicaca we were ahead of the other Dragoman truck for a change, that is until we broke down! I cant remember what the reason was now but it was fixed easily and we were on our way again.
On route we stopped off at Sillustani Ruins but it was windy and raining so I didn´t feel that inspired. A girl asked for money because we took a picture of her Llama which was a first, up until now you only paid for people photo´s!
The landscape had become much flatter but we were infact at a higher altitude than Cusco. We stopped overnight at Puno (3800m). The next day we visited the communities living on floating islands made of reeds on the Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world and a wopping 270m at it´s deepest part. This was very tourist, smelly and again the people were a bit pushy / hard selling. Maybe I was getting tired of this but it did seem a level above anything we had witnessed before!
A few hours drive on from Puno we reached the Bolivian border and I saw the first wheelbarrow! I know it sounds strange that I should notice such trivial things but up until this point I had seen lots of carrying vessels and wondered why wheelbarrows were not used.
The border crossing was not too complicated and on the Bolivian side of the lake I noticed that it looked less littered and there were noticebly more trees (which I was glad to see).
We stopped overnight at a nice little town on the lakeside called Copacabana. The next day we took a boat across to Isla del Sol where there is evidence inhabitants pre dating the Inka´s. After a 2 hour guided walk and explanations about the ruins etc some of us walked the 3 hours from the north to the south of the island with amazing views across the lake to Peru on one side and Bolivia on the other. The island sits largely on sand stone with beautiful colours and markings throughout, although there is a fair amount of granite and volcanic stone also. The terrain was hilly and uneven and the air thin.
Life for those that live on the island must be quite difficult. Donkeys are the means of transport on the island but there are other animals kept too. As we neared the end of the walk we noticed a storm coming in across the lake. By the time I neared the boat the ones that were already there were shouting for us to hurry. As we got closer we could see the water had become really rough and the boat was finding it difficult to dock for us to board, having already crashed into another boat and smashed one small window! As you can imagine boarding was less than fun and literally entailed a leap of faith. The white knuckle part of the ride back only lasted half an hour until we reached calmer water again...phew! Great to be in Bolivia and this was a good introduction to Bolivian safety standards! Great fun though!