Leaving Arequipa turned out to be the start of 'The trip from Hell #2'. Firstly we woke up early to find that the water had been cut off in our hostel so we were unable to have a fresh start to our 2-day journey ahead. We left ourselves just enough time to pay our bill and catch a taxi to the bus station. Little did we realise that we didn't have enough cash on us to pay for the bill (rookie error...). I had to race out to try and find the closest ATM which turned out to be a 5-10 min walk away. Running through the streets, the locals stared at me as I was a skinny white boy looking stressed running through their streets like a madman. Breathless from the altitude I found the ATM to be broken and so frantically found another and then sprinted back to the hostel. We had a problem with our bill which delayed us further and then we finally jumped into a taxi and told the driver to hurry. He spent the next 10 minutes telling us we wouldn't make it and that the bus system always runs on time.

Luckily for us their "efficient" bus system does not alway run on time and so we made it with time to spare. We boarded and were allocated the front two seats on the top level of a double-decker. The bus stank of sweat and flies were swarming. Only 6 hours... great! We made it to our stop-over destination, Puno with no dramas except freaking out that we would run up the back of other cars, busses, people and dogs. (We didn't get much rest...)

We were told to pick up our onward tickets to La Paz at the station. When I asked the desk they looked at me blankly and said they had nothing to do with it which was not very reassuring after we'd just paid good money for this international bus. A nice fella (who I had to tip in the end) helped me get in contact with the guy who came to meet us and told us he'd send the tickets to our hostel the following morning before the bus and that we'd have a pickup to take us to the station. Again, not very reassuring to not have the tickets but oh well. We spent the afternoon in Puno checking out the main square and just chilling out. Puno is on Lake Titicaca but it is really an ugly little town and not worth checking out.

As we checked out in the morning a guy was waiting with our tickets which was a relief but when we tried to confirm about the pickup he stared blankly and said no. A little miffed we took a taxi to the station and boarded the bus. This was the first time we looked at our tickets and found that we weren't even sitting together and it was an 8 hour trip. Also, as we have mentioned before, they like to overbook for some reason. Maybe they like arguing with tourists or just pissing us off, who knows! We found our allocated seats taken and had to wait for some lady to come and sort it out who moved a few people around and we gratefully got seats together, but the inevitable argument happened with another couple of tourists who were told to get off the bus. We felt bad for them but Kate had been firm, telling the lady that we booked 3 days before and were not changing busses (bless her).

We crossed the border to Bolivia with no dramas, except that it was raining and cold. Ten minutes later we pulled up to Copacobana where we were to switch busses. We were told to return at 1pm which gave us an hour and 45 minutes. We grabbed some lunch and just relaxed enjoying being off a bus. We returned 10 minutes before 1pm and waited until 1:25pm. We were a little worried and annoyed that this was happening as our luggage was still on the bus so we walked around asking people if they knew where the bus was. Finally an Argentinian girl reminded us about the one hour time difference between Peru and Bolivia (which the guy on the bus had said in Spanish which we obviously missed). "!@#$%!!!!!!!!!!" Our bags were headed back to Peru!

Freaking out a little we found the office for the bus company to find a lovely local lady watching a Latino soap opera. We told her what had happened and as we did so she kept watching her beloved tv programme and didn't even look at us. She did not care at all of our situation. Restraining our anger at her we tried to get her to call her company back in Peru to return our bags on the next bus. She continued watching tv so Kate waved her arm infront of the tv and politely said, "no you need to look at me now, lovely Bolivian lady". She refused to call for us saying she didn't have a phone but Kate quickly pointed out the one right next to her on charge. "Oh thats only for national calls". You little liar! Anyway we got a number out of her finally and went to a call centre to try it.

The number didn't work and so we were forced to track down someone who spoke English and paid him to make the call for us. The number still didn't work so we returned to the 'lovely Bolivian lady' and told her this. She was not happy to see us again! haha. Kate basically told her that she worked for this company and it was her obligation to help us. She wasn't going to be told off by a gringo and shot straight back saying she was in a different country and it wasn't her problem. I think she realised she wasn't going to get rid of us so she came to the call centre with us and made the call herself (like she should have done in the first place!). She said that they would be on the next bus which wasn't arriving until the next day at midday... "!@#$!!!!!"

We were forced to stay the night in Copacobana, which isn't a bad little town but we'd passed through it before as we had boarded our catamaran tour here a few weeks back with Steve and Charm. To make all this worse it was raining and really cold and all our warm clothing was in our bags!

Not going to let it get us down we calmed down in a hostel room for half an hour before heading out to go for a walk. The Gods let up on us and showed some sunshine thankfully and it warmed up. We found a nice cafe on the water and watched the sun set with a few beers and a deck of cards. It was a really nice afternoon considering our dilemma.

We were at the bus stop at 11:45am sharp the next day waiting for the bus. We should have known it wouldn't run on time and yet again stressed that we had missed it. It showed up an hour later and to our astonishment the bags were in the bus and hadn't been touched! Our spirits lifted instantly and we felt so relieved to have it all back. It was a rookie error to leave our luggage out of our sight and also to not change our watch passing into Bolivia, but all was well in the end. The joys of travelling. Haha!