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Published: October 22nd 2010
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The Boss
In two countries at the same time - or at two different times since they´re in separate time zones! Departing Peru
We were due to leave Puno on a 7:30AM bus, which we booked the night before. Our travel agent had told us that we would be picked up from our hostel and taken to the bus station. Since our bus was taking us to Bolivia, we spent the last of our Peruvian soles that night, although we returned to our hostel to discover that the Boss had s/6 left in her purse.
After checking out at 7, we sat out front of the hostel to wait for our 7:10 pick up. By 7:15 we were starting to worry when a girl came out of the hostel and asked “Joseph and Fiona?” We nodded, she gave us our tickets and disappeared. We really should have learned by then that “pick up” meant no such thing. A guy from our hostel came out and hailed us a cab, the cabby charging us s/4 to get to the bus station. At the bus station we paid our s/1 each departure tax and thanked God that the Boss hadn’t remembered her spare s/6 the night before.
The bus took about two hours to get to the Bolivian border. There we all piled off
Me
Doin the same thing. and stood in a line, along with another bus load of passengers and a bunch of people crossing from Bolivia in to Peru, waiting to get in to the customs office. Inside the office was a solitary man who was inspecting passports, then stamping the Peruvian entry card. He was particularly chuffed to meet me, saying, “Australian? Pais de Kangaroo?”Before having a laugh. He stamped my entry card and off I went.
From there we went to stand in another line to get in to the customs building next door. Once again, a solitary man was sitting behind a desk, taking our entry cards before stamping our passports as having left Peru. Surely it would have been quicker and easier for the two of them to operate out of the same building since all they did was each stamp a separate document? No, that would make far too much sense.
From there we walked across the Bolivian border (where the Boss and I got photos of standing with one foot in each country) to line up again to get our passports stamped as having entered Bolivia and receive our Bolivian entry cards. Once again, the customs guy said something about
kangaroos and had a laugh. I was proving quite the hit.
We eventually re-boarded the bus and ten minutes later we were paying 1 Bolviano each for entering Bolivia before piling out at Copacabana, the Bolivian city on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The Boss and I booked a bus to La Paz for the following day and a ticket for a boat to Isla Del Sol for that afternoon. We barely had time to pack an overnight bag, stash our backpacks in the travel agency and grab a take-away hamburger before boarding the 1:30PM boat for Isla Del Sol.
Island of the Sun
We arrived at the island an hour and a half later to be greeted with the news that we had to pay 5 Bolivianos each to step foot on the island. That day we had paid to leave Puno, to enter Copacabana and now again for Isla Del Sol. Though it wasn’t much money, (at 7 Bolivianos to the dollar) it was becoming increasingly frustrating that we had to keep forking out money without being told in advance or even what we were paying for.
From the dock it was a ten minute walk up
The Boss and I
Our hostel may have been freezing cold but it had a decent view! steep, stone steps to the town of Yumani. We tried a few different hostels before settling on one at 30 Bolivianos for the night. It was far and away the cheapest place we found and it fulfilled my only criteria for accommodation - it had a power point (I wanted to charge my computer and our iPods). Having paid for the room, I plugged in my laptop only to discover that the power point was connected to the room’s light. If the light was on, the power didn’t flow from the outlet. But when I turned the light off and connected my laptop to the power point, light alternated between the light bulb and the computer at half second intervals. This was to prove particularly annoying after dark, when to power my lap top we had to deal with a strobe effect from the solitary light source.
With views of the snow-capped Cordillera to the West, the island itself was beautiful and I finally understood why Lake Titicaca was so famous (besides the name of course). With the last of the day’s sunshine sparkling on the lake, we went for a walk along one of the island’s tracks heading north.
We didn’t make any of the ruins or historic sites but did manage to meet a family of local children who ran up to us, asked us to take their photo and then, having done so, demanded we pay them for it. I gave them 50c Bolivanos for their efforts and was rightfully scolded by the Boss for doing so.
We watched the sun set from a cafe and shared a couple of beers. At 20 Bolivianos each, we spent more that day on beer than accommodation! With the sun gone, being on an island at almost 4000m altitude kicked in and we headed back to the hostel to warm up. It was then that we discovered why the room had been so cheap - it was freezing cold and the beds were thin, hard mattresses on flimsy, squeaking frames. I dozed for what seemed only twenty or so minutes before the occupants next door turned on either TV or a radio at a ridiculous volume. We decided to go get dinner more out of boredom than hunger.
It turned out I had dozed longer than I anticipated because Yumani was completely dead. We found one open restaurant out of
the dozens we had seen earlier on. We went inside, were shown to a seat and then completely ignored by the waiter. I picked up a couple of menus which weren’t particularly inspiring and didn’t have prices on them and we waited. The waiter cleared off some drinks from another table, stood around not particularly achieving much and then walked out the front door to go to the little market next door which was part of the business. We left. It’s incidents like this that show why the people of these countries are so poor - not because they’re screwed by the government or the cocaine lords but because occurrences like that are far too common. A customer is not seen as a source of business and therefore money but as a nuisance to be ignored.
We went back to the room and slept in our clothes. I woke for a time in the middle of the night because my face was freezing but otherwise the squeaky, flimsy frames and thin mattresses did their job.
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Aussies por el mundo
Kyle Sullivan and Tahlei Watson
chin up
sounds like things haven't been going your way of late... hope things improve for you in bolivia. dont expect the service to be any better though. i think we've become accustomed to bad service after 2 years in spain. make sure you have a few salteñas for brekky, they'll make you feel heaps better. that's my last recommendation - everything we recommend to you seems to blow up in your face! sul