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It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in La Paz and Ian and Jeanette were bimbling about when suddenly they decided to go to Lake Titicaca right there and then. Advised that the last bus that day to Copacabana left at 1600, they packed quickly, left a note for the others and set out with a buzz of excitment in the air.
Woolfing down a Ceaser Salad with Chicken, the pair proceeded to direct a taxi to the bus terminal. Unfortunately, as it turns out, La Paz has two bus terminals and busses to Copacabana went from the other. By now the hour was closing in on four.
But then - what luck! Just as they were leaving the terminal they heard a woman shouting "COCHABAMBA! COCHABAMBA!!" They paid the 20Bs. each and jumped on the coach feeling things may go alright after all.
Copacabana.
Cochabamba.
"Ian." Jeanette cries with a start; "We're on the wrong bus."
The ever-handy Lonely Planet smirks at them both as he pronounces with some delight the location of Cochabamba - the Central Highlands, the exact opposite direction from Lake Titicaca.
Lucky, Jeanette's song saved them before the bus left
the terminal. If not, there may well have been a great deal of confusion when, on arrival, they could find no lake. Jumping into the nearest taxi they ordered a quick escape to the other major bus stop, feeling every second tick past.
Ian and Jeanette bought the last two seats in a small white van (it fits maybe twelve) and are finally on their four hour bus journey to the right town. A bumpy and uncomfortable journey t´was, but with some fanstastic scenery.
Half way through the journey, passengers had to vacate the bus and take a small boat to cross this lake. The buses were put onto essentially floating pieces of wood, and the two were reunited at the other side to continue the journey. Even in this calm weather, the bigger buses were dangerously moving from side to side, but all made it to the other side dry enough.
They arrived in Copacabana and were pleased to be greeted by the smell of fish. The town was quite different to La Paz with far less people, wider roads and just a lot more space. Some parts of the town proved quite strange. For example,
it was 8pm on a Saturday night, but the recommended restaurant had closed. Indeed, the following day they sat down at a Restaurant only to find this was a non-food-serving kind.
This evening, luck was on their side. Picking the last room in the hostel and the last table at a (food-serving) restaurant the pair could finally relax. The food was fine and the kindly hostel-owner had sold them tickets to cross over to the Isla del Sol at 8.30am the following morning. Things were going okay.
That night, neither of them slept very well due to very creaky beds. The slightest movement were send them a-creaking.
And that day, seven a.m. came quite early.
The following day, Ian and Jeanette bought some food for the day from Copacabana's version of little-fat-fruit-ladies and had a bread roll by the lake-side as they waited for their boat.
Lake Titicaca may have very good Trucha, but it is nasty travelling on it. The boat journey was maybe an hour and a half and a half but felt like so much more. The lake is just so big you're sitting there cramped in feeling like you're going nowhere
at all.
However, that day proved to be really good. The boat left them at the North end of the Island and they had a nice three-hour trek to the South end. The air was fresh (albeit lacking in 02) and it was nice to be out of the city for a bit. The Isla is beautiful - we have some pictures. By the end, with only one twisted ankle between them, they felt tired but refreshed.
By the way, the Isla del Sol is where the sun was born.
Or so I'm told.
At 3.30pm the annoying little boat took them back across the water, just as it was starting to rain. A bit more trucha later and the pair were ready for their bus journey home (that morning they had bought tickets for the last bus - 6.30pm).
As expected, things didn´t go as expected.
Ian was suprised to descover that there existed two sets of tickets for their seats, and their seats occupied. What followed was a half hour wait in the cold as kindly Bolivian bus drivers ran about trying to sort out what had gone wrong (¡Son turistas! ¡Con boletas!). Jeanette stood their dreading another night of creaky beds.
"That bus is NOT leaving without us" she declared as thunder struck overhead.
It all came out in the wash though and they were given seats deiciocho y deicinueve. By now, a proper full on storm was brewing with thunder and sheet lighning. Next came the most exciting part of their little adventure.
The bus arrived at the point where bus and passenger need to cross the little lake seperately. In the middle of a storm.
The rain/hail/snow (nobody could really tell which it was) came at them sideways with force. The water was choppy and the wind blew them all over the place. The captain steered the rudder with his foot, flashing a torchlight up ahead (it was pitch black). Ian and Jeanette clung on to each other as if re-inacting a scene from Titanic feeling soaked wet through.
It was fantastic.
No matter how hard the elements tried, they could only make him feel more alive.
They arrived on the other side and huddled like penguins with all the other travellers (maybe about fifty) in a small cafè. Jeanette used her extensive Meterological skills to estimate the storm's eye may be as little as 3km away.
Then, just for kicks, there was a power-cut.
They met a Polish lady who had left her money and cards on the bus and who was getting quite anxious even despite Ian's well intentioned jokes about them just now fishing the bus out of the water. The lightninig was blinding and the storm showed no will to cease. Occasionally the group would see a car drive past, but no busses. They waited in the dark for well over an hour. Yet at this point, it occured to Ian that despite the wind, the hail, the cold, the dark, that crying kid, the drowned bus and the uncertainty, he was perfectly content.
Some time later, the group was informed the 1730 bus wasn´t risking it and that passengers needed to find some accomodation for the night. Much hope for thier own bus was slipping away.
Another bus travelling from LaPaz to Copacabamba turned up and after a while decided to just head back the way it had came. Good man. The driver charged people 15Bs. (about a pound) to join him on the two-and-a-bit journey back to La Paz.
I'd have charged 50.
With a slight twinge of guilt, Ian and Jeanette left their Polish friend behind in the dark crowded cafè to await for her stuff . On a bus again, not their bus admittedly, but a bus, the pair can only look at each other and laugh. Very wet. Very cold. Exhausted. But moving.
On the way back the bus as one goggles at the extent of the storm. In just a few hours Bolivia is blanketed with a good few inches of snow.
Arriving in La Paz around 11pm, a twenty minute taxi costs as much as the two-hour bus. But there you go.
Jeanette went straight to bed contemplating the concept of "home".
Ian had a long warm shower and, just after serenading James and Tammy on the charango and pulling the blankets tightly around him, thought to himself "This, this is most certainly not
The End."
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Emma
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The Suspense
I wait with the most bated of breaths...a fine example of life being as gripping as a book, as always it should be when you're living it.