Through Bolivia to Lake Titicaca to Peru!

 

View Larger Map

Monday,  February 18
 

We woke up to catch our bus to Sucre, a town north of the flats with great historical culture. It was the first time that our assigned seats weren’t next to each other, but thankfully they were just one row apart. The ride was a pretty windy one, which we have become quite used to by now. Unfortunately we couldn’t say the same for the Bolivian lady sitting beside David. This poor lady couldn’t hold her stomach and started getting sick in a bag 20 minutes into the trip! She was pretty good about it, holding up her blanket so David couldn’t see it all happening. She did however, fail to prevent a little bit of spatter from getting on his pants! Way to start off a morning eh? If you thought that was bad enough, it wasn’t until she ended up farting on him that he was completely mortified!

 

It wasn’t long before they made us all get off the bus in a dingy terminal and a sketchy part of town along the way. They were directing some of us onto one bus, and others on another even though we were all going to the same place. None of us had any idea we were even suppose have this bus switch, so we all got worried for a while. The 2 buses ended up joining together again however, and it all ended up working out just fine. This stretch lasted hours, while the bus continuously stopped to pick up unpaying local people along the way. At one point the aisles were full of traditional Bolivian women with their wide skirts and long dangling braids, and their children in their arms leaning over onto us for the rest of the way.

 

When we arrived in Sucre at 7:30 pm we all literally ran off the bus for air, ready to lose our sanity. Still with Michelle and Brian, we opted to attempt walking into the city centre where they already had reservations at a hostel. We walked around in circles trying to read a map that didn’t make any sense and after 30 minutes of not making any progress we decided to just hop into a cab. Their hostel turned out to be super swanky for $60 a night so Dave and Alice headed down the street in search of something a little bit more in their price range. We found something quickly, just 3 blocks over for only $11 a night, which we were happy with.

 

Tuesday, February 19

 

After our complimentary breakfast of the usual toast and coffee, we met up with Michelle and Brian to explore the town of Sucre. We  walked through the central park in the “Plaza de Armas”, the political square and headed down the street to find a mini central park with a mini Eifel Tower. The parks were beautifully landscaped with well kept cultural building all in white surrounding them. The streets were narrow with loads of people running to and from where ever they needed to be, a mix of tourists and locals throughout. The central part of the city was very touristy, filled with cafes, shops, and tour agencies.

 

We decided it might be fun to veer out of the touristy area and head back to the bus terminal to pre-book our ongoing tickets as we had heard from other backpackers that they were filling up fast. So we headed over there by foot this time, and after 2 hours of walking and getting slightly lost along the way we found it and completed our mission. We stopped at a local hat store at the terminal so Michelle and Brian could buy some fun hats and then headed back to tourist town for an overdue lunch. We had Philly cheese sandwiches and taco’s at a café with the best hot sauce thus far.  

 

  

After lunch we split up to have some down time, but not before planning a patio/wine party back at Michelle and Brian’s swanky hotel. Dave and Alice spent the afternoon watching episode after episode of their new favorite show Game of Thrones and didn’t even end up having time for a nap in the pouring rain. By 9 o’clock the rain still hadn’t stopped coming down, so we figured our patio party idea wouldn’t work, but we grabbed our rain jackets and headed over the pick up our friends anyway. We opted for an indoor wine and cheese party back at our cheese plate find from the night before and next thing you know... we had downed 3 $6 bottles of wine and hadn’t even eaten dinner yet!

 

By this time we didn't even realized the kitchen was closed, so we walked down the street and found another café that still looked alive and kicking. We ordered a big Mediterranean plate for 4, and of course another bottle of wine and laughed the night away.

 

Wednesday, February 20

 

We woke up in no shape to move anywhere too fast. After eating as much left over pasta as possible to soak up our hangovers, we checked out of our place and headed over to Michelle Brian’s to take advantage of their extra hour before checkout. We were able to leave all of our bags there for the day as we had a few more things to see before leaving town later that evening.

 

We walked through the square and found a cute café that looked like they had a good espresso machine, wifi, and yummy cakes in the window. We spent a couple of hours there, searching the web for our much dreaded expensive flights out of South America and across the pacific ocean. After lots of sweating and price checking, we settled on a flight out of Quito, Equador to New Zealand for March 19 with a great big stop over in Fiji.

 

The owner at the “Abis café” was super hospitable, we spent some time getting to know him and he invited us to his brand new restaurant down the street for a late lunch. At 2pm we said thank you and goodbye before jumping on the dinosaur bus to Sucre’s infamous Jurassic Park. While excavating an area 30 minutes out of town, Sucre had stumbled upon over 50 000 dinosaur tracks and turned it into a big tourist attraction and museum. We took a tour that taught us all about the tracks and their origin.

 

We ended off our great hangover day in Sucre with a delicious home cooked meal at the new “Abis Restaurant”. As soon as we were done eating we quickly thanked the owner again and headed back to the terminal for yet another long windy, mountainous overnight bus ride. We quickly realized it was going to be a long night when we saw that there was no bathroom on the bus and only 30 minutes into the drive people were getting sick left, right and centre. An exceptionally gross lady was sitting behind Michelle, hanging over her seat coughing and making gagging noises all night. At one point this lady got up and walked down the aisle with a bottle in her hand leaning over Alice’s chair and heaving like she was going to throw up all over the place! Thankfully she sat back down and was able to mildly contain herself.

 

Thursday, February 21

 

At 2am we finally stopped at a hole in the wall for a bathroom break. The bathrooms were almost unusable due to the dirt and smell coming out of them. There were only 2 stalls that had to be shared by all the people on the bus (men and women) and the doors had huge holes in them so you could completely see the person doing their business inside! The toilets didn’t even have a flushing mechanism, you had to fill up a jug of water and wash your business down the toilet yourself!  When we got back on the bus, we realized how pungent the smell of puke actually was in there.

 

When we were all in utter disgust and just as we were thinking it couldn’t get any worse, the bus broke down at 5am. David and Brian went outside a few minutes later to see what had happened, and there 5 steps away from the door to the bus was gross lady, squatting down taking care of a number 2! The night just couldn’t end soon enough. It took 4 hours to get a mechanic out to fix our bus and we didn’t arrive to La Paz until noon that day.

 

Completely run down and irritated, we walked uphill into the centre of town with our big bags to find a hostel. Thankfully we found room at the Wild Rover, quickly and almost painlessly. The place was huge and nice and it even had an Irish pub/restaurant built into it. We had a delicious and cheap homemade veggie soup, stir-fry and Cajun fries for lunch and didn’t wake up from our nap until 9pm.

 

When we woke up it was pouring rain, so instead of going anywhere, we ordered a pizza and went right back to bed.

 

Friday, February 22

 

Alice couldn’t sleep past 5:45 am and worked on the blog until Dave opened his eyes at 8. They went to the pub for their free coffee and toast and set out to meet Brian and Michelle at the Plaza Marillo ( the main square) for noon. Michelle was having a slow morning as she was feeling flu-ish so we went back to pick her up before heading to our pub for another delicious, cheap home cooked meal.

 

After lunch we dropped Michelle back off at her hotel and set out to explore the city. We walked over to the La Paz Prison which was only a block away from Michelle and Brian’s place. We thought it was a little weird that the jail was right smack in the middle of a busy city, but it was pretty interesting none-the-less. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking to and through the witches' market. It was street after street of shops and vendors selling all the touristy things under the sun, from home hardware materials to musical instruments to finger hand puppets.

 

Later that night we met Brian at the La Paz movie theatre to grab dinner and to see the new Die Hard movie.

 

 

Saturday, February 23

 

 

Michelle and Brian came to meet us at our pub for yet another delicious meal for breakfast. We had a lazy morning as we didn’t have to check out until 1pm. We had a terminal lunch and hopped on a 3 hour bus to Copacabana, a city on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. We got 2 rooms at the Mirador Hotel for only 60 pesos a night ($10 US). We went directly to the tour office to book a tour of the lake for the following day and our next bus out of Bolivia and into Peru. We only had a half an hour to walk around the tiny, but super cute town before it got dark. When it did get dark, we huddled into one of the restaurants on the strip called Mantah Aku for steak, pizza and onion rings.

 

Sunday, February 24

 

By 8:30 we had had our continental breakfast and were on our catamaran lake tour of Titicaca. The tour was a long, cold and rainy ferry to the island called Isla De La Luna. The sky was just finally beginning to open up as we stepped foot on the island. One of the islands few inhabitants walked us up and around the island explaining it’s heritage and the meaning behind it’s name. An couple of hours later we were on the second island called Isla De La Sol where the sun conveniently came out in full effect and we enjoyed a nice patio lunch.

 

By 5:30 the tour was over and we were back just in time to catch our 6:30 bus to Peru, our 8th country in just over 2 months of travelling. We got our favorite front row double decker seats with a view. Just as we were starting to dose off 3 hours later, we all got woken up and kicked off the bus to switch busses. Here we are thinking oh no, here we go again!

Thanks for tuning in!
With love from a(nother) bus,
D'Alice