Erin & Regan's South American Adventure

Hola,

On our last night in Peru we went to the artesenal markets as our guidebook told us it was one of the best places in SA to buy alpaca stuff.  I (Regan) bought a cool hat with ear flaps (see last photo).  Erin bought a green jersey (you can just see it in the first photo below).

We decided to take a ride in a Trici-taxi powered solely by a wheezing peruvian.  Despite the wheezing he did pretty good.  Erin felt a little guilty about making him do all the work so we gave him a tip at the end.  These trici-taxis were everywhere.

Early the next morning we boarded a bus for Copacabana.  Our ticket was originally for one night there and then on to La Paz the following day.  However, once we arrived we decided to carry on to La Paz because the weather was pretty crap.

On the way to Copacabana we crossed the border.  At the border we exchanged our Peruvian soles for Bolivian bolivianos (sometimes called pesos).  It was a fairly easy and painless experience, except we were surprised to find out that we were only allowed into the country for 1 month.

The trip from Puno to Copacabana was a relatively short one.  Once there we met this monkey. It was near the bus stop in Copacabana.  It had a leash attached to it´s tail, but the other end wasn´t attached to anything.  Despite that, it didn´t seem to stray too far.

 

From Copacabana we travelled for about an hour to a small place we have forgotten the name of.  To continue towards La Paz you have to cross the narrowest stretch of Lake Titicaca by barge or boat, this includes the bus itself!

This last photo is of me (Regan) in San Pedro on the other side.  Notice my gnarly hat.

We arrived in La Paz.  The driver of our bus very kindly dropped us off outside his brother´s hostel (no, we don´t really know that for certain but my guess is he gets some sort of cut from every tourist who goes there from his bus).

Instead, we wandered the streets for at least 2 hours looking for a cheap hostal.  The prices were all much higher than our guidebook lead us to believe and that was for some pretty dingy looking dives.

In the end we decided to leave the next day, and so settled for a cheap and only slightly dingy place.  We had a room with a private bathroom, however it was so small if you turned on the shower it fell in both the handbasin and toilet at the same time (we are not joking!).

The next morning we quickly checked out the markets in La Paz, they are actually quite good, if terribly disorganised.  It seems the prices here for stuff ain´t bad.  We plan to come back and buy us some cool stuff to send home and/or the UK (i.e. blankets for 40 bolivianos... approx NZ$7).  The only real problem is the cost of postage.

After that we headed to the bus station and bought a ticket to Sucre, an overnight trip that only leaves after 6:30 at night.  We stowed our bags with the bus company and wandered around aimlessly (looking for food, internet, etc).

As it turned out our bus left one hour late (inexplicably).  It made it´s first stop in a suburb of La Paz called "El Alto" where many people got on, some were passangers, some were selling food and drinks and one was stealing our bag.  That´s right, he hopped on the bus, asked us to open the window.  While our backs were turned he took my bag from under the footrest, under my feet.  Shortly after that he left the bus and it wasn´t for another 20 minutes that I noticed my bag was missing.  We searched the entire bus (the other passengers were very helpful and seemed genuinely upset).  It was then that we remembered the strange man asking about the window (when it was actually quite a chilly night) and we put 2 and 2 together to make "the bugger stole my car... I mean bag". 

Needless to say the rest of the trip wasn´t much fun because I had lost my PDA (containing my books and music), our IPOD and some of my warm clothing including my lovely new hat, my gloves, and my scarf (from Cusco).  Not to mention that they got my Leatherman too, which will prove to be a real pain to be without.

Upon arriving in Sucre after a loooooong trip (14 hours) we went straight to the police.  Luckily we met an American girl on the bus who has been living near Sucre for the last year and could speak fairly good spanish.  She kindly agreed to help us with the police and we spent the rest of the morning trying to convince them to provide a police report of the incident.  In the end we finally got a report, only to discover that we had to pay 10 bolivianos for it.  Don´t you love Bolivia!

Last but not least the American girl (sorry, forgot her name) took us to a nice and cheap hostel called "Residencia Bolivia" where we decided to stay, at least until we figure out what to do next.