Heading to Bolivia

One overnight bus later, we arrived on the border of Peru. We immediately grabbed another bus and headed for the border. Our destination was Copacabana, a little town on the shore of Lake Titicaca, the largest navigable high altitude lake in the world! 

One thing about Bolivia that you don't expect is that it does its best to make Americans feel unwelcome from the beginning (not the people, they are wonderful, just the government.) At the border crossing (which is an experience in and of itself because you have to walk yourself from the Peru check-out over to the Bolivia check-in, which are about 400m apart) there is a line for “everyone else” and a line for Americans. The lines are separated because everyone else just goes and gets a stamp in their passport; Americans have to pay a $135 reciprocity fee and also have to find out that all the other visa materials that the Bolivia government says are required aren't checked at all. I think they make it as difficult as possible just for fun. They tell you that you need proof of yellow fever vaccination and copies of your passport photo and all sorts of random stuff and then at the border they only ask you for a form and the money. Worse still, the fee has to be paid in US dollars or else they give you a horrible exchange rate to pay in local currency.

Bye Peru!

After border crossing, we came into the town of Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca and were told that there was a 1 Boliviano fee to enter the town (equivalent to like 13 cents.) There is no such thing as a damn town entrance fee!! The people in front of us told this to the collection man and he said they could stay on the bus if they wanted. I was not happy, but also not willing to argue over 13 cents. When we finally got to town, we were feeling particularly cheap since we’d just spent over two days budget in about 20 minutes. We found the cheapest lodging we could at $4 each. Unfortunately, we quickly realized that “the cheapest hotel you can find” in Bolivia isn't probably the best option. Saying it was ‘not that clean’ is an understatement.. Saying it was ‘the grossest place we’d stayed yet’ is probably not an overstatement. But it worked for the night, and they let us use their kitchen which ended up being hilarious. The kitchen was not really for guest use, it was more for the family so we tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. The owner lady thought our meal of quinoa stir fry was hilarious for some reason. The kitchen had no running water so cooking, and especially cleaning afterward, were really difficult. I did the cleaning and didn't do it right the first time. The lady also thought that was hilarious. Basically she was just really confused by us gringos.

The next day we found a nicer place and explored the town a bit. We rented kayaks and went out on Lake Titicaca for awhile. At sunset we hiked up to the hill overlooking the lake and it was gorgeous.

Out on the lake

Hiking up to see the sunset. On the way up you get to learn about the stages of Jesus´ crucifixion

Waiting for the sun to set

The town of Copacabana

Lots of boats out on the lake

Finally the main event!

We were happy just to rest in Copacabana, since we traveled through Peru pretty quickly and had taken a lot of long bus rides. The first two days we didn´t do much, but the third day we took a boat out to the Island of the Sun (Isla del Sol) which is one of the most sacred places in Incan society. The legend has it that the Sun God was born there. We took a 45 minute (mandatory) tour and learned all about the island’s past and present inhabitants. Actually, the people that live there now are just about as fascinating as the Incans. There are no cars on the island and there is rarely electricity. Everyone learns three languages: the local Aymaran language, then Spanish, then English, and most people subsistence farm. After the tour we hiked the length of the island which took about 2 hours. We picked up a companion from Argentina and hiked with her the whole way. On the north end of the island we got some pizza and found a hostel. Probably for the rest of my life I will not pay less than what we paid that night for the hostel: $2.75 each for a private room that was clean and warm. We did get one big surprise that night (which happened to be Halloween!) which was that there was no electricity at all on the island. We bought a candle from a little store and played cards by candle light. Actually a pretty fun way to spend a Halloween.

The tour guide had us make our offering to this giant sacred boulder that represents where the sun god was born, the leaning one is Keegan's offering 

There were lots of cool Incan ruins and even a few from the people that lived on the island before the Incans!

View from the hike

Cards by candle light!

The next day we caught the ferry back to Copacabana. We learned that La Paz (the capital city and our next destination) was only 3.5 hours away so we hopped on an afternoon bus and headed out.

Despite its best effort to steal all our money, we had a really good first few days in Bolivia!!