November 7, 2011
At 7am Alvaro picks me up at his hotel in Puno and drives me to the terminal terrestre. As I am waiting in line at my bus companies ticket booth I look behind me and see John and Elisha from Australia who are taking the 7:30am bus to Copacabana as well but with a different bus company and I tell them I will meet up with them there since it is a small town. As I am waiting to board my bus outside I hear someone behind me and see that it is Hugo from Mexico with his female traveling companion from France who were on the same Lake Titicaca tour as me the previous day and they are on my bus but going straight through to La Paz Bolivia.
I took a tourist bus which is much more comfortable and the best thing to do when you are going through customs so the bus won't leave without you. At 10am I reach the Peru/Bolivia border and we get out and go through customs. Apparently I am suppose to have a piece of paper upon entry into Peru that I am missing so they charge me an extra $5US to fill it out again. Why don't they staple these important pieces of paper into your passport like many countries do?
From the Peruvian border we all walk 1 km to the Bolivian border and go through their customs and then hop back on the bus. Copacabana is just 8km from the border. There is a time change today and also Bolivia is 1 hour ahead of Peru so we lose 2 hours. My guidebook said there are no ATM's in Copacabana and so I have $400US and get it converted into $2700 Bolivian dollars. They have a hard time breaking big bills here.
Our bus stops in the middle of the main intersection in Copacabana and takes 5 minutes backing up and going forward in order to do a U-turn while everyone is honking at us (I don't blame them). I go up the road and take the first place I see just so I can drop off my suitcase and check out the town. I immediately head towards the beach and go to a coffee shop that my LP guidebook recommends for "real" coffee. I get there and look at the menu and see coffees for about $1US and think that it might be instant coffee judging by the price so I go with a moka coffee for $3US just to play it safe. I point out the moka coffee in the menu that I want to the Bolivian waitress and she reconfirms by saying "the normal moka?" and I say yes. The furniture at this restaurant is made of tree stumps and they are not level as I can feel that I am not sitting properly and not exactly comfortable.
Well she brings me my moka and it is in a big glass so I am already very happy about Bolivia but when I take a sip something tastes odd. I can taste alcohol in my coffee but can't for the life of me figure out why it would be alcohol when I ordered a "normal" moka. I ordered burger and fries since Copacabana is a real gringo town and all you see is gringos here. As I am finishing my meal I see John and Elisha from Australia walk by and I call them in. I tell them about my coffee that tastes like alcohol and John studies the menu and says that the next drink below the normal moka is "Moka with rum" so even with the waitress reconfirming my order she still gave me the wrong one. Adding rum to your coffee is only 25 cents more! But I don't really like alcohol at these altitudes since it is easy to feel sick.
John and Elisha order their meals and I take a chance and order the $1US coffee and to my astonishment it is REAL coffee! Just sitting there I felt like I was back at home as I see white gringos everywhere, western rock & roll blasting down the street as I sip my real coffee.
After that we head out and check out the street markets that are full of vendors selling everything. I am looking for sandals but there is nothing my size. Bolivia is super cheap! I can't get over how cheap everything is compared to even Peru. Later on Elisha wasn't feeling very good and the meal I just had was not sitting well in my stomach (probably the altitude) so we retired to our own hotels for a few hours to rest and plan to meet up for dinner at 8pm.
During dinner I compare notes of my observations of South American people with John and Elisha's since they have been traveling for 3-4 months now and I am shocked that they complain about the same things I have been complaining about in this blog and how different our gringo countries are to these countries and how people act. You guys already know most of these things so I won't get into it. Anyhow we are the only ones in this restaurant that is playing western rock and roll and John and I order a Hawaiian pizza each and Elisha gets a Lasanga which she already knows won't be like she is used to back in Australia. After we finish our meals the woman comes over and cranks the volume to the music right beside us to where it was deafening and all 3 of us look at each other where we can't believe she did this without caring about her 3 customers comforts and I quickly call her back and tell her to turn it down which she does.
On Monday at 6:45am I grab my pre-packed suitcase and head down to John and Elisha's hotel. Their main hotel door is locked with the metal cladding over it so I pound on the metal door for 5 minutes and no one answers and there is no door bell. So I go around to the back of the hotel and begin throwing little pebbles at their second floor window and I miss and hit the hotel room window below theirs so I stop and just yell up at them and they open the window saying they will be down to let me in. We leave our luggage with their hotel and head out for breakfast at the place were I met up with them. Immediately John and I order 2 coffees EACH just so we don't waste time since service around here can be spotty at best. My American breakfast gets delivered to me in pieces over a 45 minute time frame. 2 bites every few minutes sort of thing.
At 8:30am we get our boat that has about 20 others on board for Isla de Sol. There is a couple stops before we reach the last stop which is at the north side of the island where our hike begins. So our group slowly figures out where they sell their tickets ($1.50US) to enter the island and we study our poorly drawn maps and cut across a beach to find the trail. We head to the northern end where there are "Chinacana" ruins and then we head south. I am a fast walker so get ahead of both of them running off the trail at times and climbing some hills to take some photos etc... I meet a young couple from Germany as I pass by and then all 3 of us wait at another entry point which requires another ticket (75 cents) and John and Elisha catch up. I begin walking fast again and as I pass by 3 young women I hear one of them talk about Vancouver Island so I immediately stop walking past them and tell them that is where I am from and ask if they live there as well and the one young lady says she is from NZ but was living for a short while in Ucquelette. Small world.
I finally make it to the south little village of Yumani and wait for John and Elisha. We originally planned to stay the night on the island and catch the 10:30am boat back but Elisha was pricked by some plant and it was itching her so we decided to catch the 3:30pm boat back to Copacabana so she could go to the pharmacy to get some stuff for it. Yumani looked like a ghost town with very few people around so I was looking forward to getting back to Copacabana.
We get back to Copacabana at 5pm and are walking up the road looking for a pharmacy and as we go I inquire into some of the local hotels and see what they are like and how much until I spot the one I was originally looking for the previous day called "6th of Agosto" which my guidebook said was a good one so we went in and we all decided to grab a couple rooms here since they have wi-fi and I am able to download a lot of pictures quick so we go back to John and Elishas original place and grab our stuff and move to this hotel and decide to hook up for dinner later.
At 7:30pm I head over to John and Elisha's room which is just 3 doors down from mine and they ask me if I have tried the shower and I tell them I just did and it works great and then they tell me that they get an electrical shock when they shower which doesn't surprise me when I see the shotty electrical wiring and breakers within a foot of the shower head in most of the places I have stayed at here.
John and Elisha bring me to a chicken place for roasted chicken which is "Pollo de brazen". There are two restaurants that are exactly the same and look like a franchise but we pick one and Elisha has a good grasp on the spanish language so we let her order for us. She asks if they have "Pollo de brazen" since we can't see it but their signs tell us they do and the woman reassures her that they do have it and she just has to cook some up so we order our meals and they put everything we ask on our plates except for the roasted chicken and instead put a substitue of deep fried chicken which was not what we wanted and Elisha did specifically ask for it so then the woman says she doesn't have it and even with our plates full we decide to just leave and cross the street to the other place where we saw that they had a lot of it on display. I don't know why this woman says she has it and at the last minute says she doesn't but regardless we are gringos and if you don't have what you say you have then we simply move to the next place. John and I felt a little awkward leaving after they filled our plates but Elisha was right to not put up with this type of stuff and so the 3 of us crossed the road to the other place.
At the other place we ordered our roasted chicken and as we sat down and chatted for awhile a dog casually walks into this restaurant and passes by all the seated Bolivians at their tables and comes to the back straight to our table and sits down at the end of the table looking up at us. It was strange seeing a dog walk into a restaurant that looked like a restaurant back home. We ignored him for awhile and then he just walked under our table and stayed there for awhile and later moved on under all the other tables in the place and the owner or workers didn't do anything about it. I guess dogs casually walking into your restaurants down here is just the norm.
We bought our bus tickets for a tourist bus for La Paz which leaves at 1:30pm on Tuesday so my next blog entry will be from La Paz.
Tuesday morning I get up and hike up a big hill close to our hotel to take photos of the town. With the high altitude it really is 3 times harder than normal to get up it. I come back and knock on John and Elisha's hotel room door and call their names but they don't answer so I head to my main coffee place when John comes out of another coffee place and calls me over. They say they knocked on my door at 8am and I realize that I have not reset my watch 1 hour ahead. We go from their coffee shop that isn't really good to another one right beside it and order our stuff which really isn't good and then go to the 3rd place which is my favourite since I know they serve REAL coffee and I order 2 coffees.
We check out at 11am and then meet the woman who sold us our bus tickets to La Paz at 1pm and get on the 1:30pm tourist bus for La Paz.
At 7am Alvaro picks me up at his hotel in Puno and drives me to the terminal terrestre. As I am waiting in line at my bus companies ticket booth I look behind me and see John and Elisha from Australia who are taking the 7:30am bus to Copacabana as well but with a different bus company and I tell them I will meet up with them there since it is a small town. As I am waiting to board my bus outside I hear someone behind me and see that it is Hugo from Mexico with his female traveling companion from France who were on the same Lake Titicaca tour as me the previous day and they are on my bus but going straight through to La Paz Bolivia.
I took a tourist bus which is much more comfortable and the best thing to do when you are going through customs so the bus won't leave without you. At 10am I reach the Peru/Bolivia border and we get out and go through customs. Apparently I am suppose to have a piece of paper upon entry into Peru that I am missing so they charge me an extra $5US to fill it out again. Why don't they staple these important pieces of paper into your passport like many countries do?
From the Peruvian border we all walk 1 km to the Bolivian border and go through their customs and then hop back on the bus. Copacabana is just 8km from the border. There is a time change today and also Bolivia is 1 hour ahead of Peru so we lose 2 hours. My guidebook said there are no ATM's in Copacabana and so I have $400US and get it converted into $2700 Bolivian dollars. They have a hard time breaking big bills here.
Our bus stops in the middle of the main intersection in Copacabana and takes 5 minutes backing up and going forward in order to do a U-turn while everyone is honking at us (I don't blame them). I go up the road and take the first place I see just so I can drop off my suitcase and check out the town. I immediately head towards the beach and go to a coffee shop that my LP guidebook recommends for "real" coffee. I get there and look at the menu and see coffees for about $1US and think that it might be instant coffee judging by the price so I go with a moka coffee for $3US just to play it safe. I point out the moka coffee in the menu that I want to the Bolivian waitress and she reconfirms by saying "the normal moka?" and I say yes. The furniture at this restaurant is made of tree stumps and they are not level as I can feel that I am not sitting properly and not exactly comfortable.
Well she brings me my moka and it is in a big glass so I am already very happy about Bolivia but when I take a sip something tastes odd. I can taste alcohol in my coffee but can't for the life of me figure out why it would be alcohol when I ordered a "normal" moka. I ordered burger and fries since Copacabana is a real gringo town and all you see is gringos here. As I am finishing my meal I see John and Elisha from Australia walk by and I call them in. I tell them about my coffee that tastes like alcohol and John studies the menu and says that the next drink below the normal moka is "Moka with rum" so even with the waitress reconfirming my order she still gave me the wrong one. Adding rum to your coffee is only 25 cents more! But I don't really like alcohol at these altitudes since it is easy to feel sick.
John and Elisha order their meals and I take a chance and order the $1US coffee and to my astonishment it is REAL coffee! Just sitting there I felt like I was back at home as I see white gringos everywhere, western rock & roll blasting down the street as I sip my real coffee.
After that we head out and check out the street markets that are full of vendors selling everything. I am looking for sandals but there is nothing my size. Bolivia is super cheap! I can't get over how cheap everything is compared to even Peru. Later on Elisha wasn't feeling very good and the meal I just had was not sitting well in my stomach (probably the altitude) so we retired to our own hotels for a few hours to rest and plan to meet up for dinner at 8pm.
During dinner I compare notes of my observations of South American people with John and Elisha's since they have been traveling for 3-4 months now and I am shocked that they complain about the same things I have been complaining about in this blog and how different our gringo countries are to these countries and how people act. You guys already know most of these things so I won't get into it. Anyhow we are the only ones in this restaurant that is playing western rock and roll and John and I order a Hawaiian pizza each and Elisha gets a Lasanga which she already knows won't be like she is used to back in Australia. After we finish our meals the woman comes over and cranks the volume to the music right beside us to where it was deafening and all 3 of us look at each other where we can't believe she did this without caring about her 3 customers comforts and I quickly call her back and tell her to turn it down which she does.
On Monday at 6:45am I grab my pre-packed suitcase and head down to John and Elisha's hotel. Their main hotel door is locked with the metal cladding over it so I pound on the metal door for 5 minutes and no one answers and there is no door bell. So I go around to the back of the hotel and begin throwing little pebbles at their second floor window and I miss and hit the hotel room window below theirs so I stop and just yell up at them and they open the window saying they will be down to let me in. We leave our luggage with their hotel and head out for breakfast at the place were I met up with them. Immediately John and I order 2 coffees EACH just so we don't waste time since service around here can be spotty at best. My American breakfast gets delivered to me in pieces over a 45 minute time frame. 2 bites every few minutes sort of thing.
At 8:30am we get our boat that has about 20 others on board for Isla de Sol. There is a couple stops before we reach the last stop which is at the north side of the island where our hike begins. So our group slowly figures out where they sell their tickets ($1.50US) to enter the island and we study our poorly drawn maps and cut across a beach to find the trail. We head to the northern end where there are "Chinacana" ruins and then we head south. I am a fast walker so get ahead of both of them running off the trail at times and climbing some hills to take some photos etc... I meet a young couple from Germany as I pass by and then all 3 of us wait at another entry point which requires another ticket (75 cents) and John and Elisha catch up. I begin walking fast again and as I pass by 3 young women I hear one of them talk about Vancouver Island so I immediately stop walking past them and tell them that is where I am from and ask if they live there as well and the one young lady says she is from NZ but was living for a short while in Ucquelette. Small world.
I finally make it to the south little village of Yumani and wait for John and Elisha. We originally planned to stay the night on the island and catch the 10:30am boat back but Elisha was pricked by some plant and it was itching her so we decided to catch the 3:30pm boat back to Copacabana so she could go to the pharmacy to get some stuff for it. Yumani looked like a ghost town with very few people around so I was looking forward to getting back to Copacabana.
We get back to Copacabana at 5pm and are walking up the road looking for a pharmacy and as we go I inquire into some of the local hotels and see what they are like and how much until I spot the one I was originally looking for the previous day called "6th of Agosto" which my guidebook said was a good one so we went in and we all decided to grab a couple rooms here since they have wi-fi and I am able to download a lot of pictures quick so we go back to John and Elishas original place and grab our stuff and move to this hotel and decide to hook up for dinner later.
At 7:30pm I head over to John and Elisha's room which is just 3 doors down from mine and they ask me if I have tried the shower and I tell them I just did and it works great and then they tell me that they get an electrical shock when they shower which doesn't surprise me when I see the shotty electrical wiring and breakers within a foot of the shower head in most of the places I have stayed at here.
John and Elisha bring me to a chicken place for roasted chicken which is "Pollo de brazen". There are two restaurants that are exactly the same and look like a franchise but we pick one and Elisha has a good grasp on the spanish language so we let her order for us. She asks if they have "Pollo de brazen" since we can't see it but their signs tell us they do and the woman reassures her that they do have it and she just has to cook some up so we order our meals and they put everything we ask on our plates except for the roasted chicken and instead put a substitue of deep fried chicken which was not what we wanted and Elisha did specifically ask for it so then the woman says she doesn't have it and even with our plates full we decide to just leave and cross the street to the other place where we saw that they had a lot of it on display. I don't know why this woman says she has it and at the last minute says she doesn't but regardless we are gringos and if you don't have what you say you have then we simply move to the next place. John and I felt a little awkward leaving after they filled our plates but Elisha was right to not put up with this type of stuff and so the 3 of us crossed the road to the other place.
At the other place we ordered our roasted chicken and as we sat down and chatted for awhile a dog casually walks into this restaurant and passes by all the seated Bolivians at their tables and comes to the back straight to our table and sits down at the end of the table looking up at us. It was strange seeing a dog walk into a restaurant that looked like a restaurant back home. We ignored him for awhile and then he just walked under our table and stayed there for awhile and later moved on under all the other tables in the place and the owner or workers didn't do anything about it. I guess dogs casually walking into your restaurants down here is just the norm.
We bought our bus tickets for a tourist bus for La Paz which leaves at 1:30pm on Tuesday so my next blog entry will be from La Paz.
Tuesday morning I get up and hike up a big hill close to our hotel to take photos of the town. With the high altitude it really is 3 times harder than normal to get up it. I come back and knock on John and Elisha's hotel room door and call their names but they don't answer so I head to my main coffee place when John comes out of another coffee place and calls me over. They say they knocked on my door at 8am and I realize that I have not reset my watch 1 hour ahead. We go from their coffee shop that isn't really good to another one right beside it and order our stuff which really isn't good and then go to the 3rd place which is my favourite since I know they serve REAL coffee and I order 2 coffees.
We check out at 11am and then meet the woman who sold us our bus tickets to La Paz at 1pm and get on the 1:30pm tourist bus for La Paz.
