We made it to Bolivia! On Tuesday we got our tourist visa from the Bolivian Consulate office in Puno. We had read it would maybe be only $100 if we went to the Consulate instead of the $135 at the border. Unfortunately both of those prices are outdated and it actually cost us $160 either way. Luckily Bolivia is much cheaper than Peru so I think it's $160 well spent. The process to get the visa was pretty easy and the guy was friendly enough. I'm just thankful he let us in, because as you may or may not know it is extremely expensive, difficult and time consuming for South Americans to get a visa for the US, so he could have returned the favor and denied us entry. But all turned out well, and we even made our bus on time despite thinking it left half an hour later than it actually did. The bus ride was only 3 hours and was mostly uneventful, as usual. The exciting part was the border crossing, possibly my first overland one ever now that I think about it. We had to go to 2 different offices on the Peruvian side to get our exit stamp and then walk across the border to get our entry stamp for Bolivia...exciting! There was a guy filling out paperwork in front of the office on the Bolivian side so I asked if he was American (since we are the only ones that have to apply for a visa). Yes, he said, and it made me glad that Lauren and I had gotten it taken care of before so we didn't have to be like him. Poor lad. In line we met an older Australian lady that was with a tour group and she was so funny; she kept calling the other member of the group sheep and baaa-ing. I don't think she liked being part of a tour. But she seemed to take a liking to us because she gave us her info and told us to come visit her at her beach house on an island off the coast of Melbourne, where we could surf all we wanted. I just might take her up on that offer, she was an entertaining lady.
After we got our Bolivian stamp in our passport (yay!) we hopped back on the bus and rode the last 15 minutes into Copacabana. Copacabana is a small little tourist town on Lago Titicaca with one main street where all the hostels and shops are located. The bus dropped us off one street over from this in front of a hotel and told us it would be 40 Bolivianos each (less than $6) for one night with breakfast included. We had already booked a crappy hostel for $15 each with no breakfast, but luckily I used booking.com so they don't require credit card information and I don't think they have a way of making me pay the cancellation fee. I guess I'll find out. So we stayed at the cheap hotel with our new Spanish friends, the 4 guys we had met on the overnight trip we did from Puno. That night we got our boat tickets (only 25 bolivianos, $3.60 for a 3 hour ride) for Isla del Sol, which we planned to visit the next day. We were going to all go to dinner together but we found a really cool vegetarian place and it didn't have wifi, which the guys wanted. So we said we'd meet up later instead, and Lauren and I sat down to probably the best meal we've had in over a month. We got toasted bread to start with tomato, cheese and spinach. For dinner I got a salad with quinoa, onion, potatoes, hard boiled eggs, avocado, tomato, and a few other veggies. It was so yummy, and healthy after all the bread and cheese we've been living on. Lauren got pasta but it actually had veggies in it, a rare thing. We were feeling well fed and went to go meet up with the Spanish guys, whose names by the way are Augustine, Alberto, Pedro and Guillermo. They had found a place with 'wifi' (we soon learned that wifi is very rare in Bolivia, even if a place claims to have it) and they each had a huge plate of steak and potatoes. Man food. We hung out for a bit until I could hardly keep my eyes open, I was so tired despite it being pretty early. We planned to meet up with the guys for breakfast in the morning and then we would go to the docks to catch our 8:30 am boat.
The next day we got to the docks early, then stood around for awhile wondering where we were supposed to go. We finally saw our captain and boarded the tiny ship, along with about 40 other people. They sure know how to pack us in like sardines in South America. The guys had met another couple from Spain on the way to the docks, so we all sat up top chatting with them for the duration of the ride. When I say 'we were all chatting,' what I really mean is that the boys were chatting with this couple, while I was staring intently at all of them trying to figure out what they were talking about. I thought I was used to Spain Spanish, but now that I've been using Andino Spanish for the past month I could hardly understand the Spaniards. They have a tendency of using a 'th' to replace the 'c' sound, and they were speaking really fast. Needless to say I was lost, but I consider every effort to understand a learning experience. When we were about 45 minutes from the dock on the north side of the island, my body decided that it had to pee really badly. Like, I couldn't hold it for a second longer (probably because I'd already been holding it for 2 hours). There was no bathroom on the boat, but I had to go. I went downstairs to the corner of the boat and was about to attempt peeing into a plastic bag while Lauren tried to cover me with my jacket, but luckily the captain seemed to sense what was going on and he told me I could pee off the back of the boat. His buddy (who ended up being our guide on the island) grabbed a blanket and he, the captain and Lauren all held it up to shield me from the other passengers while I squatted over the water. It was probably one of the classiest moments of my life. But when you gotta go, you gotta go, and I sensed it wasn't the captain's first rodeo.
We got to the dock a short while later and we all grabbed a sandwich as a snack. By this point we were basically a group of 6 (the Spanish couple we met were staying on the north end of the island while the 4 guys and ourselves were all staying on the south) and it was nice to have made some new friends to hang with for the next couple of days. We had decided to follow the guide that came with us on the boat, while he showed us the various points of interest on the island. He only spoke Spanish because his primary language is Aymara, the language of the indigenous people in the area. Luckily he spoke very slowly and clearly so I could actually understand basically everything he was saying. And lucky for me, I was also hanging out with 4 bilingual Spanish guys so I could run over to one of them and double check everything I had heard. The guide showed us the 'Bermuda Triangle' of Isla del Sol, 3 small islands that are sacred to the Aymara people. They have actually found a number of small objects underwater inside this 'Bermuda Triangle' that suggests an ancient city once existed before the lake buried it. Pretty cool huh? We also saw the giant sacred rock that is supposedly in the shape of a puma head, so we found the puma rock after all! In Aymara 'titi' means puma and 'caca' means rock, so the puma rock after which the lake was named does indeed exist. I could see the resemblance, but I also think that people see what they want to see. We visited the site of an old Inca temple (the Inca came to the island and conquered the people living there, as they did to many indigenous groups) where our guide explained to us why the doors are so short and small. I have been wondering ever since we saw Machu Picchu and every Inca site since why the doors have been so small. I kind of assumed it was because the Inca were tiny people, despite hearing once before that they were over 6 feet tall. All the Peruvians these days are tiny so I figured the Inca must have been just as short. Our guide told us, however, that the Inca were about 6'6" or taller, and they built the doors so short because they would fold their arms over their chest and bow before they entered the temples. This was an act of reverence and humble offering to the gods.
Augustine, however, didn't believe the people were that tall. He has a PhD in biology, and he was explaining to me a theory about the relationship between height and latitude in mammals. This theory states that the farther a mammal is from the equator, the longer (or taller) it's limbs are. I can see how that would make sense, especially because I've been to Holland. Talk about tall people. Augustine was really interesting to talk to, as were all the boys. Pedro constantly made us laugh with all his funny faces and sounds he made, and he was crazy tall (like 6'6") so for some reason that made him funnier. Guillermo was really lively and fun to chat with. He had done a surf trip to Morocco and a cross country road trip across the US, so he likes to travel a lot. Alberto was the one who spoke the least English so sometimes he would tune out, but he was really funny when you got him talking. He also acted as the group 'manager' who held onto all the money, so every time the guys needed to buy something they would call to Alberto. Lauren and I found this dynamic quite amusing.
After visiting the temple, we started the 3 hour walk that would take us to the south end of the island where we would all sleep for the night. It was a fun walk in the company of our new friends, and we were atop a ridge line for much of it so the view of the lake was fantastic. I can't get over what a large and beautiful lake it is. I feel so fortunate to have gotten to visit the highest navigable lake in the world. We arrived in Yumani, the community on the south end of the island, around 3:30 and planned to meet up for dinner at 4:30 because we were all starving.
We found a super cheap hostel (only 30 bolivianos per night, <$4.50) and once again I think we were the only people staying there. We seem to have lower standards than everybody else; all we need is our own bed, a toilet, and a door that locks. We consider anything else to be a bonus. Besides, it feels good to give some business to the local people who seem to not have very much of it. Why support the hostels that already have all the money? We prefer to share the love.
We had dinner on a rooftop overlooking the lake. The meal was nothing special, it was the company that made dinner great. We sat around talking and laughing about anything and everything. The boys are close friends and have been for awhile so they have their own way of joking around that was really entertaining to be a part of. For example, 3 of the boys have their Doctorate degrees and the only person who doesn't, Pedro, is the only one who is actually a doctor. But they don't call him a doctor because he hasn't gotten his PhD yet, instead they call him a physician. I found all that quite funny, as did the boys because they made sure to remind Pedro about that every chance they got. Pedro was always a good sport about it, which speaks a lot to his character. I found out after the trip that all the guys are 35, except for Guillermo who is 39. If I had to guess I would've thought they were in their late 20s, so it's nice to see that age is only a number and anyone can be youthful. After dinner we moved the party to another place where we could get drinks. At this place it was determined that we would only speak Spanish for the rest of the night. I think Alberto got tired of using his English, and it was only fair that we started speaking their language. We wanted to practice our Spanish anyway. So we chatted for awhile and I tried to explain myself as best I could in Spanish, which was pretty awful, but at least they only made fun of me a little bit. At one point Pedro was telling me something and I was smiling like I knew what he was talking about, but when he asked if I understood I just shook my head, grinning all the while. He found that pretty hilarious. During all of this attempted communication in Spanish, Pedro, Guillermo and I shared a bottle of delicious red wine. That got me a bit tipsy. The next bottle got me almost drunk. We started playing Presidents and a******s, a great card game where the winner gets to boss around the loser. That was hilarious in itself. Needless to say we had a wonderful time with the boys, but after the second bottle it was time for bed. We each went back to our own hostels and planned to meet the next morning to catch the boat back to Copacabana.
The ride back to the city was shorter, and after we picked up our stuff we said goodbye to the guys. They were heading to La Paz a day before us in order to squeeze in as many things as they could before heading back to Spain in a couple weeks. They were amazing company and I'm glad they let us tag along with them for so long. It was sad saying goodbye, they were good fellas. After we parted ways, Lauren and I set off on our own again to find a hostel for the night and buy our bus tickets to La Paz. We grabbed some lunch and then resigned ourselves to doing pretty much nothing for the rest of the day. We had already been to Isla del Sol, basically the only thing to do in Copacabana. We took a stroll by the lake, grabbed some dinner and then settled into our hostel to watch Van Helsing in Spanish. That night there was a massive thunderstorm and we could see the flashes of lightening happening right over us at frequent intervals. In fact, there had been a thunderstorm the first night we were in Copacabana as well. I love thunderstorms but I'm glad they decided to only grace us at night. Being on a boat in a storm doesn't sound too fun.
Today we waited around until it was time to catch the bus to La Paz. Copacabana was fun but I'm looking forward to getting into the heart of Bolivia. We plan on being in La Paz for about a week, so I'll keep you posted on our adventures in the big city. Ciao for now!