Fortunately the second day was a little more productive than our first day in La Paz (although not particularly surprising). We did a walk from Tuni (about two hours outside of La Paz) to the Condoriri base camp at 4700m, through stunning scenery. You can see why people keep coming back for the many treks in the Bolivian mountains.
Condoriri is one of the mountains in the Cordillera Real and like most is a rather technical climb if you want to get to the top. The walk to base camp, although reasonably tough (17kms, between 4300m and 4700m), fortunately only involves very gentle slopes (so is very easy on the knees, unlike the Inca Trail!).
Again, we seemed to be very lucky with the weather. The sun was out all day and when we set out the area was covered in a thin layer of snow from the previous night. By the time we had lunch though, the snow was gone and had transformed the landscape into a green version of the one we walked through in the morning. Very cool.
Again, some pictures to follow when I get to a (much faster) computer with USB and some sort of image editing (resize) software (other than MS Paint in Spanish… que??).
Isla Del Sol is an island in Lake Titicaca a few hours boat ride from Copacabana. Apart from some ruins, the birthplace of the sun itself (according to locals) and more Puma shaped rocks (according to same locals), I found it´s main draw card to be the scenery.
It sounds pretty cool with some of the “mountains” on the island being over 4000m above sealevel, but of course it´s easy to forget the lake is at 3800m give or take, reducing these mountains to some pretty easy going hills and making the walk we did around it pretty straightforward. Still, nice scenery and nice not to have to deal with the neverending stairs we grew accustomed on on the Inca Trail.
Today was a day of recovery and washing just about all our clothes after finishing the Inca Trail yesterday (4 days, 42 kms, altitude up to 4200m). Not a bad little walk and we were very, very lucky with the weather considering the wet season has just started, so overal a great few days. Definitely one of the best hikes I’ve been on.
Will worry about putting up some photos one of these days, but might be tricky until we get to say… Canada 
Some overal thoughts:
Cons
- hikers everywhere, feels like Piccadilly Circus in July! Which is an interesting sensation at 4200m above sea level in the middle of nowhere
- can be misty sometimes (understatement), you can see why it took them a while to discover most of the trail including Machu Pichu): literally within minutes an entire valley can appear and disappear from view. This can happen any time of the year though, so it really just feels like gambling, you either get lucky or you don’t
- hard work if you happen to get a case of TD (traveller’s diarrheoa) two days before you start (as I might have ) Otherwise the walk is very do-able compared to some
- definitely not a place for people with a fear of heights (luckily I’m over mine nowadays… or enough anyway!)
Pros
- amazing views (when there’s no clouds) with a great variety of plants, flowers and landscapes
- service with a smile: the porters carry so much stuff, they really make your life pretty easy on the tour (including three course meals and chairs to have lunch on!)
- what an ending! Machu Picchu really is an amazing place, made even more spectacular by the surroundings
Off to Lake Titicaca tomorrow, then Bolivia which should be interesting (http://article.wn.com/view/2007/11/27/Morales_defiant_as_protests_leave_4_dead/). It looks like our first change of itinerary is coming up already and we haven’t even left our starting point yet…!!