Friday, 31 October 2014
This morning I woke up in time to take the 10 am boat to Isla de la Luna or the Moon Island. This island is much smaller compared to the Sun Island, and has only one ruin, the Moon Temple or the House of Women. The entire Moon Island or Coati was a palace of worship of the sun's woman, considered his wife. The Moon Temple or the House of Women was a place of gathering for chosen virgins, who were guided by an old woman called Mamacona who instructed them in worship and divided the work among the girls, such as learning handicrafts and other domestic responsibilities such as cooking, cleaning and washing. Those days only women lived on the island; men were not allowed. Girls as young as 5 were selected and sent to this island for training to become a proper woman.
The building has a centre courtyard with stone roofs, walls with trapezoidal door and windows, and the stones were laid one on top of the other without any mortar. The Moon temple dates back to the Tiwanaku people, but when the Incas came they rebuilt the temple directly over the older Tiwanaku one, so what we see today is an Inca ruin.
The Moon Island is also known as Coati, from the Aymara word Coa which means snake. The story is that the island used to be festered with snakes, thus the name. But now there are no snakes on the island because there was a big battle between the Inca leader Pachacutec and a the leader of all snakes, in which Pachacutec slayed the giant snake and then there were no more snakes throughout the Inca empire. Or so the story goes.
After this it was back on the boat to the south part of the Sun Island for about 2 hours, before the boat left for Copacabana. This was what I wanted to do on the first day I arrived on the Sun Island, but my bloody boat arrived late. I hung around the Sun Island for a bit, and then took the boat to Copacabana. Here I bought a bus ticket to La Paz at 6.30 pm, and I would arrive at La Paz at approximately 10 pm. I booked a hostel in La Paz with wifi as I had been without wifi for about 3 days now.
Since I still had time, I decided to go check out this magic frog in Copacabana where if you smash a bottle of champagne in its mouth, your wishes would apparently come true. This required taking a boat for a short ride to another part of the coast. With a bit of imagination, you could make out the shape of a toad with its mouth open. Here there were shamans offering all sorts of services, but there was one man who told me in broken English what the tradition was. First I needed to buy 4 bottles of beer; 2 were to be used as offerings to Pacha Mama, the stone frog, and various other Andean beliefs. 2 is for me to drink, but before that I am to make a wish and break a bottle of cheap champagne directly in the frog's mouth. Since I was already there, I decided to try out this local belief so the 2 bottle of beers for all sorts of offerings, and then I made a wish and luckily for me, I managed to break the bottle of champagne directly in the frog's mouth. If I missed, it would mean that my wish(es) would not come true. And then I drank a bottle of beer and I couldn't finish the second, so I gave it to the man who told me about the tradition.
Then I returned to Copacabana by the same boat (the service includes the waiting time) and boarded the bus to La Paz feeling slightly high.
On the way, we had to stop to take a boat across Lake Titicaca and then re-board the same bus. The bus also had to be transported on a ferry across Lake Titicaca to continue the journey to La Paz. I have no idea whether this is the only way to La Paz or whether there is in fact a road all the way to La Paz, but this way creates a lot of opportunities for the locals to earn some money giving boat and ferry rides to tourists. While waiting for the bus, I saw some women selling some fried fish, and an old woman offered a small fish called ispi for me to try, and it was suspiciously devoid of any bones; at least I could not feel the crunch of the bones when I ate it. So I bought some of this fish to eat on the bus, it was delicious. Ispi is one of the local fishes that is indigenous to Lake Titicaca, unlike the trout which is an introduced species.
I reached La Paz at about 10 pm, and I took a cab to my hostel where I had a shower and went to bed.
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