Where in the world is Sue???

So I finally left Peru from Puno and crossed over the Bolivian border.  It was an easy crossing, though, carrying our backpacks up hill to the Bolivian border at an altitude of 4000m had everyone huffing and puffing.

I met a Brit and French girl on the bus and we decided to find a hostel together in Copacabana.  What they didn´t tell us when we bought our tickets was that there are no cash machines in Copacabana and there was a ferry strike on so getting to La Paz, the Bolivian capital, was going to mean backtracking into Peru and then back into Bolivia at another Bolivian border crossing.  Fortunately, we had an Australian who was living in Bolivia on the bus and she was able to tell us all these important details.

In Copacabana, our first stop was some lunch on the beach at one of the local restaurants.  We had some delicious trout before heading off to explore Copacabana.  It didn´t take too long and we took some admin time before walking up Cerro Calvario, a nearby mountain to watch the sunset.  Another walk at altitude but we soon joined the masses who were waiting for the same thing. It wasn´t a spectacular sunset in the end but we got some really lovely views of Lake Titicaca. We decided on the adventurous route down and took a path straight down the mountain, however, we had left it too late and we were walking mostly in the dark.

The nightlife in Copacabana is pretty much non existent.  We had one beer each and then tried to find somewhere to eat.  Bear in mind, it was only about 9;30pm so it should have been an easy task, however, most places were closed and the one we finally found open took an hour and a half to serve a soup, a bowl of spaghetti and  some vegetables.

Next morning, after buying some lunch in the nearby market, we headed off to the docks for a boat ride to Isla del Sol, an island in the middle of Lake Titicaca.  We had to wait half an hour while they  found some oil for the boat but finally we were away, at a snails pace though as the boat had very small engines for its size..  After the three hour trip, we arrived at the North Port. We had already decided that we were going to walk the three hours back to South Port.  Again, the altitude was over 4000m  but it was a very pleasant walk and took us past some Inca ruins. The views of the lake were spectacular.

We thought we were making good time when we reached the entrance to the South Island, and after paying our fee to enter the south island, the man at the entrance said we were 20 minutes away from the docks.  It was perfect, we found a restaurant with colourful umbrellas outside and sat down for and hour for a drink in the shade.  We thought that taking 30 minutes to get to the docks would be enough time, however, we forgot South American time and had to leg it back to the boat.  It took more like 40 minutes back but we weren´t the last ones back.

Jossie and I had decided that it would be easier to make our own way over the border than wait for the expensive busses with their schedules.  So at 9am the next morning we started on our adventure for the day.

Breakfast was a saltena.  A very sweet pastry filled with chicken in a gravy, egg, olives and sultanas.  It was a weird taste and a sensory overload.  Less is more sometimes. 

We shared a taxi to the Bolivian border with some locals to bring the cost down.  It was only a 10 minute ride before we were at the border and had been stamped out  of Bolivia.  Huffing and puffing with our packs, we walked back into Peru, completed the customs documentation before taking a tuk tuk to the collectivo´s to take us to Desaguredo, the town where we could leave Peru.  It took an hour an a half in the collectivo or combi.  Most exciting about the trip was watching our backpacks being loaded up onto the top of the combi along with two live sheep who had been stowed there earlier.  Their legs tied together so that they couldn´t move.

The queues at the Peruvian border were horrendous and it took us  two hours in the queue to spend a minute in front of the customs officer to get our stamp.  Once done, we crossed over no mans land towards Bolivia, but we were stopped by Bolivian customs who wanted to search our bags for food and drugs.  Honestly, do I look the type.  However, they seemed more interested in my money pouch and wallet and were looking for dollars and nothing more.