1st November

Today is a special day. Not just a new destination, but a new country. Bolivia.

The journey into Bolivia was a long one, or at least it felt that way. Not as long as Ecuador into Peru, but long enough nonetheless. Starting at 7am and finally arriving at our hotel around 4pm, we travelled by both bus and boat to reach our destination for today; Isla del Sol in Lago Titicaca.

The boat journey taught us one thing; Bolivian standards are very different from those in Peru. Yesterday our boat in Peru was well built, had good seats, an engine compartment, two pilots professionally manning the wheel and a life jacket for everyone on board. Today, our boat was held together with string and elastic, had fifty year old “hard as you like” seats, two open engines spewing fumes around the back of the boat, one pilot who steered the boat with his foot while chatting to his wife and no sign of any life jacket for anyone. It’s health and safety gone mad I tell thee. The cherry on the cake was the pilot’s infant son flying a kite off the back of the boat. I like their laid back way, but I think that was asking for trouble somehow.

Despite the odds working against us, the boat didn’t sink, and we reached Isla del Sol quite safely. Isla del Sol is the most sacred island in this most sacred of lakes. And tonight, we are to stay here before walking over to the other side of the island in the morning. Before that of course, we had to get to our hotel, and to reach that we needed to hike up (why is it always up?) a very steep hill for about half an hour. The hotel we have chosen is our cheapest yet at around $7 a night. It wasn’t “quite” finished granted, but it had everything we needed. What we didn’t expect though was the view, and this was just amazing. And what made the view even better was the beer served as reward for completing our precipitous hike. A perfect way to settle down and round off this eventful day. What more can a man ask for?

The perfect end to this day wasn’t to last. South America is a noisy place. You hear dogs barking and car horns all day long, and often well into the night. It’s also quite common for someone in the vicinity to crank up their all-night club / disco around 9pm and have it running into the small hours. I still haven’t quite got used to this level of noise and have had a lot of trouble sleeping ever since I arrived. On Isla del Sol I thought, this small, quiet island miles from the mainland, I’m bound to get a good night’s sleep here if nowhere else in this country.

Imagine my surprise then, at 3am, when I heard what I thought was the bass drum from a marching band. No, it can’t possibly be, this is 3am, sleepy time, I must be dreaming this or something. Thankfully, the drum faded away and I wrote it off as paranoia or some audio hallucination off the back of my lack of sleep. I dozed off for a moment but then the drum came back, then the trumpets, then the snare drums. You have got to be frikkin kidding me. I just can’t believe that these people are having some sort of celebration at 3am, marching along in the pitch black, when everyone else is trying to sleep. Sleep? I can’t even remember what that is any more.

After several minutes of intense anger management, the noise of the band faded and somehow I managed to doze off once again. I still can’t quite believe that it actually happened, but trust me it did. I never did find out what it was in aid of, but I sincerely hope that this isn’t a sign of things to come in my “special” Bolivia. Already this is looking to be a very strange place indeed.

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Part of trip: South America 2009 - Ecuador, Peru & Bolivia

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