Bye bye Peru, hello Bolivia

Hi everyone



This post is just from Nina. I am sitting in our new hostel in La Paz, Bolivia (Arthy´s guesthouse) which is a nice quiet and basic hostal. We have a twin room and share showers, toilets etc. (all very clean) but there is a big communal room and it only costs us c $10 a night, so it is pretty good value. The only odd thing is that there is a midnight curfew...

So on Friday 13th (always good day for travel) we left Arequipa for a 5 hour bus ride to Puno, which is closer to the border with Bolivia and next to Lake Titicacaa. Bus ride was uneventful (we travelled with Flores) and we arrived at hostal Pukara. Really nice hostal - more like a hotel- which was lovely. I thought it was really good value at 35 soles (or about $10) with a double room and private bathroom. Realised our mistake when it cost $35 instead - still it was probably worth it.. The only downside of the place was that our room was on the 4th floor and no lift - still have to keep all those muscles discovered on the trek to MP in play.

We were only staying one night in Puno as we wanted to cross the border. So we quickly bought a ticket to La Paz, went for a quick look round Lake Titicacaa (massive!) and then got some food. Last night in Peru so we enjoyed one of their famous drinks (Pisco Sour) and it was lovely. We were going to spend some time in Puno but wanted to press onto Bolivia. The main tourist attraction is going to some islands in the middle of the Lake which we have been told is a bit like a ´human zoo´- so we skipped that.

OK - quick run down of the fun that was crossing the border day - Sat 14th. (Most over-used phrase of the day...íts all part of the travelling experience´).

1. Got to bus station at 7am for bus to desaguerdo (went with pan americano and they seemed fine).
2. 3hr ish bus ride. Fine.
3. Everyone gets off at desaguerdo, which is just a border town described as unscrupulous in the guide book. Join a line for peruvian border. With all our luggage as the bus isnt allowed across the border.
4. Stand in line for ages and ages. In the sun. With 2 chinese people singing the beegees behind us (great).
5. Get stamped at the peruvian embassy after c 1.5 hr wait. Cross border bridge and show passports to scary looking police on way over. We were braced to be asked to pay ´gringa tax´which is just people trying to take money off non-south american people, but were fine.
6. Join line on Bolivian side. Have immigration card all filled out as were given it on bus.
7. Get to front of queue. Have wrong immigration card, so ours were taken off us and we were given new ones to fill out. Exactly the same info, so don´t really understand. Happens to the group that were on the bus so pretty chaotic.
8. Get on bus with luggage. Eat skittles we saved for a treat once we had crossed border.
9. 10 mins down the road, everyone off bus, and scary looking police check everyones passport. Overkill methinks.
10. Get to La Paz after another 3 hr bus ride and walk 15 mins uphill to hostal....Really tired!

La Paz is pretty different to the places we stayed in Peru - which were mainly small-ish towns and had quite a lot of tourists in. Don´t get me wrong, there are a stack of travellers here, but this is a capital city and really feels like it. It is sooo busy with everyone running around like London. Lots of cars beeping and absolutely loads of street stalls run by ´mature´women. They sell everything from wallets to nappies and the weird thing is they come in clumps. So you have 3 selling nappies and then 5 mins later 3 selling wallets... Also Peru was mainly sunny - it seems to rain a lot here. Really like it though as it has a good buzz. We went to an English pub last night and met a guy from Brum who works in the bar - we started talking about the Gun Barrels (a student pub in selly oak) which was the most random conversation ever.

We have mapped out our time in Bolivia and we don´t have very long as we need to be in Santiago (Chile) for 1 Dec as we have an internal flight to Patagonia. So we have already booked a bus to Uyuni on Wed 18th (overnight) where we will do our next tour and have spent today wandering round the city. There are some pretty aspects and some cool places, but we haven´t really got enough time to spend here. I am going to buy some alpaca wear though (very warm stuff) before we go. Bolivia is supposed to be a lot more ´basic´and slightly less travelled than Peru and Chile so it is a bit of an adjustment, but so far we are really enjoying it (once we were allowed into the country).

Tomorrow we are going on a bike ride on one of the most dramatic roads in the world. ...Will let you know how it goes in the next blog.

We will also keep trying on the pictures - as you can tell from our try yesterday we managed to upload them but it wasn´t very successful and it really took ages. We are both worried about losing all our photos so burned them onto a CD which we are going to send home. Might also try to upload photos to an album on flickr...

So its bye bye Peru and hello Bolivia!