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Published: August 28th 2005
dom enjoying the view
...it´s the other sideWell La Paz was great and everything, a little high but it was okay, great shopping and cheap as chips! But Itchy feet caught up with us so we packed up our things and got on a bus and ended up in Puno, Peru!!
But our last few days in La Paz were very adventurous indeed....
Tiwanaku
We finally gave in and decided to join a tour group, you know those annoying groups of people in North Face coats, bags, hats, gloves, underpants, who wear safari hats in the middle of the city, well we were one of those!
But it was worth it, we had an English speaking guide who pointed things out to us which we would never have noticed otherwise, such as the fact the statues had their noses cut off because the spanish thought they were demons...how that helped though i am not sure.
Anyway, that was pretty good, apart from Dom almost getting us kicked out by ´discretly´taking photos in a no camera section!! the ruins themselves were pretty impressive, but no Machu Pichu.
Anyway, after leaving behind the scariest 4 people we have ever met, and the rich kids of La Paz ("ya well
I like can´t wait to be robbed, I like think it'll make me a stronger person"), and spending a stupid amount of money sending a stupid amount of tourist goods back to England (check the end of the blog if you want info on sending stuff home), we got a taxi to the border and negotiated with some cheeky rickshaw taxi boys at immigration, not pleased with their semi-streetwise gringo customers, and tip of half a bottle of flat Fanta. Then on board a bloody uncomfortable bus (my arse has never felt so violated, nor Dom´s - not even on the death road!) for about 4 god damn hours, to Puno.
Well here we are. Our first reaction to Peru, after Bolivia, was "wow, these people are RICH". Stained glass windows in cafes, traffic lights!!!!!, moving pedestrian signs (wow!) and prices more than double those in Bolivia. Puno itself doesn´t have much to do though, so we´ve been catching up on sleep and sampling the local food. Dom has now tried llama, alpaca and guinnea pig. Alpaca was the best.
Our Peruvian plans take us to some floating islands on lake titicaca (again - though much furthar
south this time - it´s huge!) where we will stay with a local family before checking out a village whose prime attraction is stone phalluses! Who knows when the next blog will be. We have something special planned, and plans to juggle to be back in Rio in time for our homeward flight.
Post Office info...
Okay well Bolivia makes it impossible not to weigh yourself down with amazing tourist goods, so you most probably will have to post stuff back. The first time we sent stuff, or tried to, the post office didn´t tell us that it is actually much cheaper to send via 'la aduana'- customs. They send by sea and it can take weeks and weeks, but it's worth it for the savings. It´s also possible, if you are flying back from somewhere far away, to send packages to customs of your departure point, and pick them up from there before you fly. This can be cheaper, so maybe a good idea. Or you can do as we did and befriend a naive hostel owner (if you are flying back from where you arrived), email them a few times being friendly and then bombard
them with boxes full of tourist goods, and email them on their birthday to keep them sweet!
Bolivia is the cheapest place to send back from as well as to buy, so you can´t lose. Especially as in La Paz, the correos is about 4 minutes walk from tourist central. Hello huge package!
It does take ages though, as first it all has to be examined for drugs, and dont worry about boxes, put in all in one of those laundry bags and then an old woman will to sew it into a white sack (what the hell was that about?). After that you have to queue to get it samped as okay, then fill out forms etc and queue to have it weighed and sent (by a mean lady). Our package was HUGE and weighed almost the same as our two backpacks when we left england, and cost us.. 520 Bs... that´s a lot, but what the hell, it´s not THAT much, and the stuff is great! Dom got a machette...and yes we did buy a few pressies!!
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mum dad emma
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great pics
hi great pics the quality is really good. be careful going through the jungle. not much longer now 2more weeks about and then you will have to get a part time job to fund the next great adventure?.speak to you soon love you xxx