Her name was Lola, she was a show girl...

Bolivia is famous for many things, none more so than for having intermittent or no, hot water.  Lonely Planet, Rough Guide and Trip Advisor reports are abundant with stories of travellers unable to get hot water or having to book showers in with hotel owners at certain times and to bang on the bathroom wall as soon as they'd finished but no longer than 2 minutes or the water would be stopped!

So, for the second day running, we ran the gauntlet of our rather unauthodox 'shower'.

The 'tap' to switch the shower on had definitely seen better days.

The 'shower'

Lauren went first and finished in record time reporting tepid temperatures and that the power was so little that she had to run around to get wet.

She left it running and I jumped in, just as it stopped. 30 seconds later it started and, realising this could be the start of a start/stop shower/Gareth relationship I formed a plan to make sure I wasn't left with soap or shampoo all over me (OK, the latter will never be an issue for me).

The next minute it appeared that the hotel manager had inadvertently managed to connect the hot water feed to a South American volcano and as I screamed with what felt like third degree burns, my unspoken prayers were immediately answered and the Eskimos jumped into action by attaching their best igloo water supply.

Safe to say, it was the quickest shower I'd ever had and i got dressed as if I was late for my next line on stage on Broadway.

We were checking out of our hotel and had left enough time for breakfast and to our absolute surprise, we sat at our breakfast table and were served the best South American breakfast yet, blowing our theory (bad room = bad breakfast) out of the boiling/freezing water!

We made our way downhill into Copacabana town and left our bags with the travel agent, met Dave and Eliot and walked to the harbour to board our boat to Isla Del Sol.

The boat ride took 2.5 hours to get there and the weather was cold and misty so we read books, chatted and wrote some blog posts!

We arrived at the North of the island and decided to trek the 6k uphill to see the ancient ruins left from Inca times. On the way the views were incredible and we saw loads of animals owned by the indigenous people.

Dave, me, Lauren & Eliot

An ancient sacrifice table (we think so anyway, we couldn't understand everything the guide was saying)!

3 little pigs 

Mary and her donkey made another appearance!

Isla Del Sol panoramic

The view on the way down:

We got back on the boat and headed to the south of the island where we only had 1 hour and the steps looked so steep that we decided to just sit and have a drink!

As soon as we got back to Copacabana (cue song again) we grabbed a quick drink, picked up our bags and got on our bus and within 20 minutes we were in Peru!

Border crossings are very strange and very unorganised here and this one was no different.

Everyone had to leave the bus and queue to have their passports stamped to leave Bolivia. 

Then, the bus left without us and we had to walk into Peru, find a little office (not at all clear) and check in with Peruvian customs, then get back on the bus! We genuinely think no one would've stopped us if we walked past the tiny office and into Peru!

2.5 hours later we arrived in Puno, jumped in a cab and got our heads down at our hostel (our cheapest accommodation yet at £15) for an early start the next day.