Copacabana, Bolivia

This is how it should have gone:

- Hi, I have a reservation for the lakeside suite in the name of Glenn Cumming.
- Ah yes, here it is!
- A room on cue.
- A room that’s new.
- A room for two?
- A room with a view.

This is how it actually went:

- Hi, I have a reservation for the lakeside suite in the name of Glenn Cumming.
- I’m sorry we’re full tonight.
- That’s odd as I have a reservation.
- You can’t have. Was it by e-mail? Show me.

One e-mail located, suite requested, confirmation received.

- Oh, I appear to have made a mistake with the dates.
- So we haven’t got a room because you made a mistake? That’s not very good is it?

[Heckles rising, barely there chilled out traveller persona receding]

- No. Let me check - I think we may have one room for tonight.

And thus we were shown to a room for two entirely available for the evening...

- I have this room.
- Ok, looks fine.
- Or I have the suite for $18 a night.
- Oooh toughy, let me think, this room or the suite I originally requested and that you told us less than 5 minutes ago wasn’t available (this dose of sarcasm may have been silent). The suite please.
- Ok, but you can only have the room for tonight.
- Ok.

Later that night...

- Can we book our room for tomorrow night as well please?
- Yep, no problem.

What more of Copacabana?

Sitting on the shores of Lake Titicaca Copacabana is the Italian Riviera Bolivian style - and thus nothing like the Italian Riviera.

Consisting of ramshackle streets, various accommodations, obligatory stalls selling Alpaca and Llama products and a surplus of seafood restaurants the whole town is overlooked by a rather grand Cathedral with an altar bathed in pure gold - unlike those who beg at its door.

A place to rest, relax and, if one so feels the need, sojourn to the Isla Del Sun (Sun Island) where myth has it that the Inca race was begun Copacabana rewards a laid back approach a place to be rather than do. Watching vistas of the lake itself, the waning sun (not quite a sunset due to an awkwardly placed hill) and a violent electrical storm proved a more than satisfactory way to pass an hour or two...

And that is perhaps that for Copacabana. Last stop in Bolivia - time to say goodbye to a country which surprised, shocked but rarely overcharged and hello to Peru. Back again and this time I was determined to see Machu Picchu.