frank’s big adventure

I drifted off to sleep on the bus out of Cuzco listening to Mercy, Mercy Me and woke to a woman frantically shaking me and telling me we had to get off the bus. No one else was awake, but Zach and I were ushered into a waiting minibus at 5 a.m. in the freezing cold. The sun was beginning to brighten the horizon, but I was in no mood to sit in awe. We had bought a direct ticket to Copacabana and I was cold.

Finally we were able to convince the driver that there were not going to be another 10 people to fill the bus at sunrise at an intersection in the middle of nowhere, Peru. He pulled out and we were cruising along for the border. Unfortunately it is closed until 7:30, so again we were stuck waiting. Unlike the border between Ecuador and Peru, though, once things were moving for the day it was a pleasant and stress free passage. Again we found ourselves in a minibus heading for Copacabana. From what I had read, the town is a great place to “chill out” but I wasn’t digging the hippy rasta vibes that the gringo transplants selling beads and hemp were giving off so we caught the next boat out.

Lake Titicaca might not be the highest navigable lake in the world, but it is one of the most beautiful places I have even been. After an hour and a half we came ashore at Isla del Sol, the birthplace of the sun in Inca mythology. We waded through the scores of people trying to push tickets and housing on us to find a little kid of no more than 8 years old who took us up the hill. Up up up up the hill. At the guesthouse we dropped our bags and sat gasping for breath for a few minutes before even taking a moment to look out the window at the view. We were about 300 feet up on a cliffside above the deep blue water with snowcapped peaks stretching across the horizon.

Rallying our energy we climbed up to a vantage point for the sunset. The lake is already at about 11,000 feet above sea level and we went straight at the highest peak we could see. Terrace after terrace we saw not a soul. The light was becoming magical and when when we crested the peak the view was perfect.

While the sun sank down to the horizon I looked around me at the pastel moutains and sky, the lake which looked like ice and the golden rocks around me and felt like I was inside a painting.

Later in the evening as the stars of the southern hemisphere began to fill the sky, Zach and I cracked open our box of wine and sat out in the cold watching shooting stars and the Milky Way singing songs and listening to the quiet sounds of the island. I have begun to make up my own constellations out of the unfamiliar bundles of lights to make sense of the sky, but for a while at least the big dipper was hanging upside-down on the horizon reminding me of warm summer nights in Texas.