We Go, La Paz to Puno

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Day 39-42-14th-17th October

So we arrived back in La Paz, smelling to high heaven, sleep deprived and having fantasies about a hot shower and a comfy bed. We hadn’t booked into a hostel in La Paz but had a leaflet for somewhere called the Brew Hostel which looked nicer than The Point where we had previously stayed so we walked around the corner from the bus station to check it out. They had no free rooms, dammit. No problem, we’ll head back to the Point, we thought. We gave them a call, no room, tried another hostel, no room. We were starting to get annoyed at this point; we just wanted a double room with an ensuite, is that so much to ask?! We eventually found a room at the Onkel Inn Hostel which at 25 pounds a night was pretty expensive for La Paz but we were past caring! We jumped into a taxi and headed over. It was clean, the beds looked comfy and all seemed pretty nice, great, we thought! That was until we tried to have a shower.... it was one of those pressure/temperature ones, i.e. the lower the pressure the hotter the water. This would have been ok if the temperature was hot! Not impressed, Ellory’s shower was ok if a cold shower can be considered ok, however when I got in, the shower electrocuted me! Nothing major, but every time I touched the tap my whole arm tingled a bit painfully! At this point I had a head full of shampoo, I shouted to Ellory that the shower was trying to kill me, he told me to get out, to which I replied, ‘Noooo, I need to rinse my hair!’ oh dear, vanity over safety at that point! I blame the sleep deprivation. However I got out of there as fast as vanity would allow.

We’d had some pretty intense days doing the Salar de Uyuni so we planned to just chill out in La Paz for a bit. Our next stop was to be Puno in Peru and the original plan was to spend one night in La Paz and then head on. Yeah that didn’t happen! After the first night we were still pretty tired so we booked in for a second night, we also needed to get a serious amount of laundry done so a good excuse we thought! We had a map of La Paz that had lots of restaurants, bars etc marked on them so we spent a serious amount of time working our way through them. We highly recommend Namaste Te for an excellent 4 course set veggie menu for the amazing price of 25 Bolivianos (approx 2.50), which as super tasty and filling. Thai Old Town for Asian fusion food, we had Japanese and it was spectacular! Also for unashamedly English food we would say try Oliver’s Travels, I had an amazing chicken and vegetable pie with mash which was enormous! Made a nice change and we’re not embarrassed about being so English at all!!! We did admittedly do a lot of eating for our second time in La Paz; however we also went to the Coca Museum to learn more about the history of this leaf. Coca is a big deal here in South America; most people chew it or drink the tea, especially because of the high altitude. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the museum but it was very interesting and they had a cafe upstairs where I had a coca tea, Ellory had a coca beer (it was green!!) and we had some coca biscuits (which weren’t green but were very nice!). We also bought some more souvenirs and generally had a really nice relaxing time in one of our favourite cities so far in South America.

So then plan was we would then head off to Puno on the 16th. So on the morning of the 16th we went to try and buy bus tickets, to be told that all buses for Puno leave before 8.30am in the morning as the Bolivia/Peru border shuts at 6pm. Oh cr*p. That will teach us for not being organised. So, another night in La Paz it was then! We pegged it back to the Onkel Hostel and fortunately were able to book our room for another night. That done, we went back and bought ourselves 2 bus tickets for Puno for 8am the next day. So an enforced chill out day on the 16th, ah well. We went back to Oliver’s Travels had some lunch, bought some new books as Ellory had read his to death and hung around for the rest of the day. We had an early night so we weren’t too tired for the bus ride the next day.

So on the morning of the 17th we got up, bags were already packed from when we’d tried to leave on the 15th and went to check out and pay. We needed some cash for the day, Ellory ran up the street to the ATM machine to get cash. This was when our first travelling drama occurred. ATMs in South America do not work like English ones, as opposed to getting your card back before the cash is dispensed, you get your cash from the machine and then it asks you, ‘Do you want to do anything else?’ you press No and only then do you get your card back. Well Ellory was in a hurry and just grabbed the cash and ran, 10 seconds later he realised what had happened and went back to the machine. It was too late, the card was swallowed.

I, in the meantime was back at the hostel wondering what was taking so long, when Ellory appeared with his sad tale. Although it wasn’t fatal, it did leave us with a bit of a problem as that was the only ATM card Ellory had with him and now had no way of getting cash without me. I won’t lie, I did see the rage for a bit, especially as the receptionist chose that moment to tell us that the card machine wasn’t working in the hostel and we’d have to pay our bill in cash. So I stomped out of the hostel up the street to the cash point, got out the money for the bill and by the time I had returned I’d calmed down a bit and told Ellory not to worry. It’s truly one of those things that can happen to anyone, unfortunately the timing was terrible as we were about to get onto a bus and couldn’t phone and cancel the card for another 7 hours. However we reasoned that it had been swallowed by the machine, it was a Sunday so no one could get to it and it should be fine. Rage moment over we paid the bill and got a taxi to the bus station for our bus to Puno.

We got on the bus without too many problems and finally left La Paz and Bolivia to head off to a new country and another border crossing. We’re getting used to these and are very much au fait with the ‘on the bus, off the bus, on the bus’ thing by now. We got off at the Bolivian side to get our exit stamps and then walked over the bridge into Peru to get our entrance stamps. We had to wait quite a long time on the Peruvian side for the bus to get through but it was a warm sunny day so we sat down outside the Peruvian immigration office to wait. Eventually the bus made it through; we piled back on and did the final few hours of the journey driving around the edge of Lake Titicaca, until we reached Puno.

Having learned our lesson from La Paz, we’d booked into a hostel prior to arriving, called Inka’s Rest. We turned up and it was great. The owner, Alfredo was really nice and friendly and he and his wife made us feel very welcome despite taking the mick out of Ellory’s vegetarianism. They also have a baby daughter called Helena, who is gorgeous! We asked them about the tour of Lake Titicaca and they booked us in on a 1 day tour for the next day. That done they showed us to our room, comfy bed, hot shower, bowl of sweets and hot water for the selection of teas in the room. Amazing! (Oh yes and we cancelled the card without any problems, phew!)

We headed out for some food and we’d been recommended a vegetarian restaurant nearby. The owners were very nice but the food wasn’t great and it was going to come back to haunt one of us later.....

Love Liz xxx

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