After the polluted air of La Paz and busy city feel, we were ready to relax for a couple days. We found a hostel in Copacabana, a small town on Lake Titicaca, that offered entire suites with lake views – and each one was uniquely designed. We opted for ‘The Snail’. The Snail is a two and half story building with no straight walls, windows or floors. Everything is rounded, circular and flowing. The small windows in the upper levels spiral up getting smaller and smaller. From the windows you get a great view of the night sky and in our case, a phenomenal lighting show every night.

The design from both the outside and inside is exceptional. There is a small kitchen in the lower level, the ground floor level has a large circular bed and the nicest bathroom we’ve had yet, and on the upper level there is another large circular bed with beautiful views and a small fireplace which we made good use of as it was freezing every night. Outside of our snail was a garden fastened with two hammocks and lounge chairs to relax in the sun. To top it off there was even a hot tub! We reserved an one-hour slot two of our three nights there and sipped wine while overlooking the lake and night skies loving the hot water.

In the afternoon, lamas come around to chow down on the grass – needless to say there are no noisy lawn mowers even given the vast amount of grass.

Isla del Sol

A ferry ride away from Copacabana is Isla del Sol. This island is well known in the area for “seeing locals live in their traditional ways” and hiking across the island from the North to the South. As with any well known tourist attraction, it has now become just that. Luckily it is low season and the island wasn’t too crowded. We were thankfully forewarned that there were there three ‘toll’ areas on the island where you paid to support the local communities. The walk itself was beautiful, although not very far or with much elevation changes it was time consuming as we were already at 4000m.