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Published: February 10th 2010
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We got up early, checked out of our room and went down to the port with our bags. We found our boat and after about half an hour of waiting we set sail for Isla del Sol. We made the conscious decision to leave our backpacks on the boat whilst we went around the island - this is an essential part of the story. However on previous boat trips others left their packs on too and I checked with the captain to make sure it was ok.
Anyway after about an hour and a half we arrived and were given very brief instructions which were 'meet at the port at 11am, You have 1 hour. Go up over the mountain down the other side and their is a port.'
So, we started climbing, halfway up we came to a cross roads - with no signs. So we asked some locals which way to go. They were very vague and pointed in a rough direction, and so we kept walking. This sequence of events occured at least five times and 45 minutes had past and we were not at the top - things were'nt looking too good. Anna and Ant
decided they would run down the other side to catch the boat and keep it waiting, as i was majorly struggling with ashma and altitude and Katie also had respiratory issues.
Me and Katie got half way down the otherside when we saw Anna and Ant at the bottom ans we shouted to see if they stopped it. This echoed through the valley. Turns out it was the wrong port - crap. So Anna being the a machine ran back up the mountain and back down the otherside to teh original port to see if it was there. Ant carried two bags the whole time and also deserves the tittle of a 'machine' p.s. it was not my bag, it was Annas.
Any hoo, when we all arrived back at the original port, turned out the boat had gone with all our bags and Katies insulin - so pretty much her life.
There were a few fisherman hanging aroung the port and when asked said they could take us back for 30 pound. We managed to get it down to 25 pound and left straight away, as Anna said she had only just misse the boat -
we had a chance of catching it.
One and a half hours later we were pulling into the docks and saw several boats leaving. My 007 idea was to use our camera and its 12x optical lense to zoom into other boats leaving the docks to check to see if our bags were on any. It wasn't but as we were docking, one was leaving and we could see anna's bag and her glistening silver rain cover beaming at us. So we shouted for the boat to stop. Eventually it came back to the port and we managed to offload all our backpacks. Much to the amusement of the tourists on that trip. They even managed to take photos of the incident.
After a massive de-stress, we had some lunch and decided to go to the tour shop to complain about the lack of information we recieved and the fact the boat left without us. Turns out it was not their responsibility yet co-insidently enough the guy who brought us back was the uncle of the tour shop guy. Scammed!!
Anyway we got a bit of money out of them as everytime a potential customer came into
the shop we shouted at them explaining how bad the company was and not to buy anything off them. All we wanted was our bus tickets replacing as we had consequently missed our bus. The outcome was we recieved a small amount of money - probably to get us out the shop.
We walked to the top of the street to find other companies to sell us bus tickets to La Paz. However, because it was a festival no more buses we running. A few minutes later a mini-bus pulled up charging 3 pound to get to La Paz. So we took it, we were madly crammed in but it was for only 3 and a half hours. Although, Ant was not impressed he had to sit next to a fat Bolivian women. The cramptness was not as much of an issue as a couple sat in front of us who could not stop kissing - serious PDA issues. The highlights were went she said rather loudly.... 'I like your bushy eyebrows, there so hairy' and another personal favourite was when after a kiss she said 'your kisses are so refreshing' But then to make matters even worse was
when we realised it was her own mother sat behind her - cringe!
We finally servived the journey and were in La Paz we were dumped in quite a rough looking area and were greating instantly by 4 police men. They started chatting to us and offered to get us a taxi - but Anna having just read a paragraph to me about people dressing up as police and scamming tourists make me really sceptical. However this turned out to be ok and we arrived at our Hostle safely. So after a long day, embarking on a trip to see Inca ruins on a island but never getting to see them as we were too busy running over the mountain, nearly losing all our luggage, massive rows, mad bus journeys. It was safe to say we were glad to be in our beds.
Oh also that night we also lost all our photos of Puno as we were sold a dodgy memory stick. But the main thing is we all came out a little wiser, definately sceptical and most probably never going to do a tour ever again in our lives. Well apart from the salt flats in
4 days time.
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