Isla del sol

Eating Trout in Bolivia

Hello and welcome back.

You would think that it would be hard to recount a story when the facts are buried under a haze of oxygen deprivation, dehydration and most hazardous of all… youth. 

And I’d agreed.

I mean, not only could I have missed out on all the juicy stuff, but what’s left behind could be utter twollop. 

This weighed on me for a week or two until I realised:

‘Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?”

A story that began in Copacabana. Obviously I’m not talking about the famous beach paradise of Rio de Janeiro. That would be far too straightforward. No instead I was standing on the shores of its Bolivian namesake. 

“This wasn’t what I had in mind when you mentioned Copacabana,” I muttered to my brother. 

Not surprising since Bolivia wasn’t known for its seaside resorts. Which in itself isn’t surprising since the country has no sea. But it does share a lake with Peru in the middle of the mountains. And that’s where we were. 

I could imagine Simon Bolivar and his troops camped out on the beach on their way to liberate the country that would later bear his name, thinking:

‘The sooner I get these bloody Spaniards out of here, the sooner I can get out of this shit hole and go relax on the actual Copacabana.’

A sentiment I shared myself. Except of course the part involving overthrowing an existing government. 

We sat on the beach.

“How is your stomach?”

Yes, we were having this conversation again. 

We had to vacate our previous night’s accommodation having thoroughly blocked the ablution. But that was child’s play compared to the sense of achievement we felt having managed the bus ride over without incident. 

“This beach is pretty lousy,” I replied. 

And that was me being complimentary. Had I spoken my true feelings I would have had to put an age restriction on this article. Anyhow. We moaned about the beach for a while until one of us pulled out the trusty Lonely Planet guide. 

“You know Larry, there is this island called Isla del Sol?”

I won’t lie. An island on a lake in the middle of the Andes sounded pretty cool. 

So we gave up on the beach at Copacabana. Which is something no Brazilian has ever said and found a boat to ferry us out to the island. 

Now, Copacabana may have been a little rough around the edges, but none of us were prepared for the sheer ruralness that was Isla del Sol. The village was barely a village. There were donkey carts in the street. Goats and pigs wandering around. 

There were two places to stay, though I wouldn’t have called either an actual hotel.  The only place to eat barely met the criteria of a restaurant. And the two small shops were more kiosk than shop.

So what did you do in such a place? You did what 21-year-old me hated more than anything… You went walking! Of course, with the luxury of hindsight and the benefit of some life experience, I can see how lucky we were to have experienced something quite amazing. 

But there was no way 21-year-old me was going to agree with any of that nonsense.

We followed a path up to the crest of the island, past ancient shrines and terraced farm lands. Where, my goodness, the views were breathtaking. Now, I know people say that about almost everything on the internet. 

Only this time I really mean it.

Because at over 3800m we were literally gasping for breath. The sun was relentless and it sparkled on Lake Titikaka unlike anything I had ever seen. 

The Incas believed that the sun was born out of this lake. A hypothesis that seemed more plausible with each passing minute. I was miserable, fast dehydrating and suffered from a relentless headache.  

And do you think I made a fuss? You damn sure I did. I must have been a right barrel of laughs to be around. And that was before we got onto the matter of our accommodation. 

We stayed in a bright pink room with beds so hard they made a pallet of bricks feel like a bag of marshmallows. There was no running water and I remember the bedroom door being able to fit under my armpit. 

And all of that would have been fine, had the entire occupancy of the hotel not been suffering from severe diarrhoea. Admittedly, it was just the 3 of us. But I distinctly remember not letting my personal roll of toilet paper out of my sight, and the panic I felt when they locked the door to the only toilet at 9 pm. Sharp. 

But that was all still to come. 

Because we had just returned from our walk and were in need of something to eat. 

Dinner came out of a mud hut on the lake shore. Its setting was idyllic, but in reality, that should have been all the warning we needed that the place was a hub for a plethora of stomach ailments. 

We dwelled on this for a moment but figured:

‘How much worse could things actually get at that point?’

So we did what anyone would have done in our situation and took a seat outside on some cheap plastic patio furniture alongside a crumbling mud wall. 

We ordered a few drinks and when our bravery eventually overtook our sense of self-preservation. We ordered the trout. 

Yep. 

Trout out of a mud hut in the middle of God knows where? 

And you know what? It was perfect. 

The place, the company, the food. It was everything I could have hoped for. But mostly. I could now say: “When I was in Bolivia…”

And for me at least, that was pretty cool. 

Take care, and see you next time.