To the North West of La Paz lies one of South America's most beguiling and romantic destinations, the vast, high-altitude Lake Titicaca, with its sacred Inca islands, Isla del Sol and lakeside pilgrimage town of Copacabana.

That is what the Rough Guide to South America On A Budget said about our latest destination on page 176 of their latest edition.

For quite a while now I have had a level of disdain for the books that we have been carting around with us. It is not just the Rough Guide, our other book Footprints South American Handbook 2016 is equally as guilty.

What are they guilty of?

Being regularly inaccurate, out of date and guilty of some serious romanticism, which I suspect is all about writing a sexy, dynamic critique of a overly trodden, touristic, traditional route and not written from experience.

Copacabana is certainly overly trodden and extremely touristy and in my opinion not much more.

It is clear that a lot of the reports are written from research, as opposed to experience and apparently it is not uncommon for "travel writers" to rustle up an entire book without even visiting the subject matter.

Come to think of it, it must be really easy to write a wee travel book on, say Rome, simply by using the tourist boards website and a bit of Wikipedia for a few interesting facts.

Yes it has a beautiful lake, however the beach is as dirty as you would expect from a busy tourist town and in the absence of any obvious local authority, street cleaning team, a bit grotty.

I won't go into our journey to Copacabana too much, it involved a mini bus, a trip to La Paz main terminal, bus ticket agents swarming us for our business, a brief, very dodgy looking, wooden ferry, however in the end after 7hrs we arrived, all pretty straightforward.

It seems like carnival has been going on for ever in Bolivia, officially it should be finished, not here though.

We arrived to find most of the main streets blocked off and a party in full swing.

Normally this shouldn't be a problem, this time it is a bit of a pain in the arse though.

We now faced a ten minute walk with all our stuff, not stressful in the slightest, fighting your way through large crowds, with the kids in tow.

On our first evening, we experienced more of the carnival delights.

It was very cold and obviously about to pish it down.

We headed out for a bit of an early dinner. Technically lunch/dinner as lunchtime was spent on the bus and consisted of mainly Pringles and biscuits, however other than an indication of our hunger, this isn't hugely relevant.

The main street down to the lake is a mass of competing tour operators, competing bars and restaurants, competing tourist souvenir stalls and not much else.

It didn't take long for us to pick a restaurant, not because of the pushy member of staff, who was patroling the street or because of the vast menu, there was a different external factor.

A fight was brewing.

In our immediate vicinity, around about 30 youths had gathered, on either side of the road.

They were all looking seriously prepared, tooled up, reinforced etc.

This wasn't a physical fight as such, it was a water fight.

I am not sure if this is just a carnival thing, or if the whole country is just permanently, water fight crazy, however this isn't the first water fight I have seen.

It certainly is the most vicious and well organised though.

Just before we sought shelter, about 10 mtrs down the road, it started with buckets of water being thrown off the roof tops from either side of the road.

Kids who looked as young as 5 or 6 were carrying super-soakers that were almost the same size as them, buckets full of loaded water balloons were strategically placed at the side of the road and passers-by were definitely considered as fair game.

Thankfully we found refuge in time and none of us got caught in the crossfire.

So here we were, in one of the numerous, nondescript, tourist trap, restaurants.

It didn't take long to discover that this place operated under the business model of, get them in and worry about the food and service later.

The place appeared to have 3 staff working, 2 inside and 1 geezer outside, solely to attract customers.

Unsurprisingly the meal was extremely slow and also a bit shit, cold food, small portions, that sort of thing.

So that was our first taster of Copacabana.

The book had described Copacabana as a "lakeside pilgrimage town", however the dictionary describes a pilgrimage as "a journey, especially a long one, made to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion".

Now the meal in that restaurant was a bit of a journey and was especially long.

But.

What is the book on about?

Who wrote this pish?

On the subject of these books talking pish.

Cash machines.

These books all seem to rally together and let you know that, such and such town has no ATMs, bring loads of cash, you won't be able to get any more money.

Copacabana was on this list and as always, this is complete nonsense.

I am not sure how many banks/ATMS there are in the town, I took some money out of first one I saw no problem what so ever.

Carrying large amounts of money around with you is stressful and something I prefer not to do.

What do you do though?

When the book says "please be aware that there are no functioning ATMS for western travellers".

I mentioned that it is very cold here and it feels a bit like a Scottish winter, only thing missing is that if it was Scotland there would be an icing cold wind blowing off the lake.

We were all struggling a bit and needed something a bit warmer.

Luckily llama and alpaca wool, jumpers, hats and scarves account for a about 60% of the available retail space on the main street (the other 40%, key rings, purses and llama topped pencils).

So we were in a good place and not before long we were all happily, in proud possession of our own extremely warm and light as a feather alpaca/llama wool jumpers and hats.

I was constrained by the available sizes and opted for a predominantly navy jumper although there is a further kaleidoscope of colours playing their part including; rust, ice blue, maroon, racing green and orange. It doesn't stop there though with the main feature being a series of llamas (circa 100) across the chest, stomach and arms.

If marketed back home, it would certainly be sold in December and described as a Christmas jumper.

For the next three days I happily wore it with a sense of pride and not an ounce of self-conscious.

This would all change, when I stood in the queue at the Peruvian border, three people out of a queue of twenty were wearing the same jumper.

Perhaps I can turn it inside out or something.

We knew that there was more to this area and that we just had to get out there so Isla del Sol beckoned.

We really wanted to make our own way to the island and avoid arriving in a touristic swarm, problem was we were getting quoted eye watering amounts of money and we were also concerned over the safety of the smaller vessels.

Safety, health and safety and the lack of it is something that is hard not to notice here, however that could be a blog in itself, so I won't go into any more than this.

8:30am Thursday 2 March

We have just boarded our vessel along with the wide ranging camera clad tourist group and we are chugging along towards er... "one of South America's most beguiling and romantic destinations".

The boat is slow and moving around both more than seems comfortable and more than it should, given the relative calm of the water.

I found myself looking around and it wasn't long before I had managed to count all the life jackets.

There was four.

Sitting beside the life jackets was a cowboy hat wearing American chap.

My mind was wandering and I started wondering, whether in the event of the captain (there wasn't a real captain) announcing "abandon ship), would I have to fight this chap for control of life jackets.

This sent my mind into overdrive.

He looked like he was carrying a bit of weight, would this help or hinder me?

How would the group of far eastern fellow travellers choose which of their equipment to save and what to take.

Perhaps I could use a super zoom lense as a weapon.

Had he left his revolver at home?

I always teach the kids not to be judgmental, so it isn't right to make any assumptions about a person from their appearance.

I did getting chatting to the American chap who was from Nebraska and he seemed nice enough, although it was very hard not to look at the wee silver crucifix that dangled on front of his cowboy hat and question what side of political spectrum he fell on in the greatest democracy on Planet Earth.

The journey seems to take an eternity, a glimpse of the Bolivian navy gave me something else to daydream about at least.

Bolivian Navy? It's a land locked country. They lost access to the sea in 1879.

It would seem that Bolivia isn't the only landlocked country to have a navy.

Azerbaijan, Kzyakstan and even the Central African Republic all have one.

It does seem strange how the Bolivians feel the need to have a 5000 personal strong navy on Lake Titikaca.

I can't see there being trout wars anytime soon so I would agree with the theory that the government want to put out the message to their people that one day they want their coast back.

At about 11am, considerably later than we had thought or hoped, we landed at Ch'allapampa on the north side of Isla del Sol.

Like some sort of miracle the sun was now shining.

The island was one of the most important religious sites in the Andean world in the sixteenth century.

It has a natural beauty to it that seems special, you can instantly realise why the site was chosen or even why the site chose the people.

Perhaps this was some sort of pilgrimage after all.

We hiked up a steep path, unfortunately as part of a group of at least 150 or so.

Along the way the locals all either worked selling souvenirs or providing refreshment or had rolls as guides or working the land.

We passed lots of baby animals along the way; calf's, donkeys, piggies and just as many small waterfalls and streams.

As we climbed up higher, the views grew and grew. This was clearly one of the most photogenic places that we had been for a while and it was a lovely walk.

When we finally reached the top it was nice , however there was a problem that ultimately ended in a little disappointment.

We simply ran out of time and had to turn back.

We were very worried about missing the boat, if we had, we would have needed to get to the south of the island, a two hour walk.

Rather annoyingly, back at the boat we had to wait for the remaining passengers, so could have finished the walk after all and my perspiring American friend was one of the last to board.

Disappointment aside, the visit to the south of the island was much more chilled and we sat in a cliffside cafe with a beer enjoying the sun and more of those views.

We got back to Copacabana about 5 o' clock and in the sun it looks a bit better on the eye, there was even nearly a beautiful sunset, had a last minute cloud not rocked up to kill the moment.

So that's the Copacabana.

Lorne

PS. The books are still talking nonsense though.

PPS. I am wearing that stupid jumper while I write this.