The Floating Islands

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Thank you to all of you for writing to us via the travel blog , it is really good to know you are enjoying our travel stories.
Please keep them coming!

I will have to split this next story into two parts.


First part, is the trip to the floating islands.
Quite an amazing idea, these locals who where trying to escape from Spanish persecution decided to tie a bunch of these reeds together on the edge of Lake Titicaca to create floating islands then to build houses, boats and other useful things out of the stuff.
Nowadays they make money by selling items made out of the same reeds to tourists. It was really cool, but you know that they just put on a show as soon as the tourist boat arrives.

Part 2

So............ we took a night bus from Cuzco to get to Puno, the trusted ¨Poney Express¨.
and we became South American statistics and we were robbed. ....

It happened some time in the night, one of the passengers
(a thieving bastard passenger) pulled Mel´s bag from under her seat and helped themselves to both our passports, camera and travel wallet with all our documents, drivers licences, both Mel´s debit cards (lucky only one of my cards).....they hit the jackpot.
So after me not letting anybody in our section leave the bus, I called the cops and we searched everybodies stuff, but we came up empty handed and had to admit defeat.

We checked into a hostel and made all the calls to cancel cards etc.
After reporting the theft to the cops, and calling the British embasy we were told that we would have to return to Cuzco or Lima to get replacement passports.
The thought of a 16 hour bus ride back did not really get us to excited, so we thought we would try and get a visa for Bolivia and use our South African passports.
After staying an extra day in Puno to see the Bolivia Ambassidor to try and get a visa we were told by him that because we were not stamped into Peru on our SA passports he could not issue a visa for Bolivia (we had entered on our UK passports).
The Peruivian immagration would not give us the stamp, so there was only one other viable option.....

The next day at the crack of dawn we were off to the Bolivian border.
An hour and a half later we were appoaching the Peruvian border, we had explained our litte situation to our bus driver, and after a $40 handshake he agreed to help us become illegal ´´immigrants´´.

So looking ever so cool, but crapping our pants, we snuck past the Peruvian border post, safely into ¨No Mans Land.¨
Now the hard part. Our cyote (people trafficer) slipped into the Bolivian office to stamp our passport copies whilst we looked busy by taking our photos with all kinds of random crap. After 10 minutes (that felt like a day and a half) we were back in the bus, illegal immigrants in Bolivia.

On the way to La Paz we stopped for lunch in a small lake side town called Copacabana (on Lake Titicaca).
We had great freshly caught trout, and celebrated our stressful morning.
Back onto the bus and on to the second highest city in the world.

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Comments

[Sarah Evans]

Shame guys
Sweet peas, that's terrible! Glad you're both ok and hopefully it won't spoil your experience. If you need a lawyer to help get you back into the UK, Nick will help you out!! Take care, Bean xxx

[Aida]

What kinda South africans are you!
Hi guys, cant believe the thieves got your stuff!!! You guys have been in London too long man!If you were fresh out of SA this wouldnt have happened, you would be clenched to your hand bag. Ona more serious note, good move on the serach party on the bus, shame they couldnt find anything. Nice move with the illegal immigrant stunt..that's more like it. Enjoy guys and keep safe. Lots of love Aida and Simon x

[Lynette]

Hiya bro
Just caught up with all your blogs! Rest of staff keep asking me why I'm laughing so much!! You guys are funny. So sorry we didn't get to chat last night! Three weeks today till you're here! I've got Friday off too, so we can do stuff! Can't wait to see you guys! Lots of love Lyn