I´d suggested to myself and others, that after the most physically challenging day of my life, Copacabana would be the perfect place to spend a day relaxing. This morning, as has been the case before, I realise that I don´t know how relax. I´m not sure exactly what action or inaction constitutes relaxation. Even if I did know what to do, it would feel like a waste of the four pounds I´m paying for this room. I pack my rock boots and ukuele and I´m off by ten o´clock.
Copacabana is dominated by three-and-a-half hill-slash-mountains. Despite being battered by hail for ten minutes, I set my sights on the second highest peak, which apparently has some Inca significance. After an hour and a half up, I have this peak to myself, which is quite pleasant after the queue for Huayna Potosi. I look over at the higher peak, knowing that that´s what I should do now, but it´s wet, and I´m fed up of mud and ice. After a slippery game Kevin Bacon´s Tremors, I find a nice enough and dry enough spot to throw on my rock boots for some lovely bouldering. I´m just very slightly smarter than climbing anything to aggressive, given that no one is around and I don´t have my phone. Who would I call in any case? A broken ankle up on a rock in Bolivia is hardly going to get past Jenine to Egon and the guys.
The Euro 2012 games are inconveniently positioned right in the middle of the day, at 1200 and 1445 in my timezone. I sense that this is going to slow my galavanting over the next few weeks. There´s an English-run bar where I find some English friends I met at the Paraguay-Bolivia border. France vs England is a somewhat mute nintey minutes.
I use the late afternoon to tackle the one-and-a-half peaks that are the feature of the generic Copacabana postcard. The sunset is nice enough, but at this altitude, it turns chilly the moment the sun dips under the view of the far away moutain range silhouette and impressively vast Lake Titicaca.
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