Travels Part 1 in which we leave La Paz and go to Copacabana, Isla del Sol, and arrive in Peru

My travels are too much to fit into one blog post so I'm going to do it in 3 sections. Brace yourselves; this is the first section.

My friend Sarah and I met before college. We both did a per-orientation program through Northwestern called Project Wildcat, a week long backpacking/camping/bonding expedition. We spent our week in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I knew Sarah was teaching in Chile and when I found out I was going to be spending some time in Bolivia, I decided to see if she'd be interested in doing some traveling together. From PWild 2008 to South America 2014. We ended up traveling together for 16 days in South America. And neither of us wanted to kill the other by the end. (Or at least, I didn't want to kill her and if she wanted to kill me she hid it very very well.) So I would say it was a successful arrangement.

Here is the trip in 11 steps:
1. Start in La Paz
2. Take a bus to Copacabana stay the night in a hostel
3. Take a boat to the beautiful Isla del Sol, hike the island, see the views
4. Take an overnight bus to Cusco, Peru
5. Tour Cusco for 2 days
6. Embark on the high altitude 5 day Salkantay trek through the mountains to Machu Picchu
7. MACHU PICCHU!
8. Take an overnight bus to La Paz
9. Take an overnight bus to Uyuni in the South of Bolivia (this is not a typo we took 2 overnight buses in a row)
10. Do the legendary Salar de Uyuni 3 day jeep tour
11. Overnight bus to La Paz

Sarah came to La Paz to meet up with me. We did some typical La Paz things like eat salteñas and cuñapes and went to the witch market and tourist market parts of the city. I needed to buy a couple things for our trek so we spent some time shopping and ate pizza. (spoiler: we ate a lot of pizza on our trip).

Then on Thursday January 16 we put our packs on our backs and headed to the cemetery in La Paz, the place where you catch a bus to Copacabana. These are not fancy buses; just minibuses and old tourist buses that charge you 15-20 Bolivianos (a little over 2 dollars) for the 3 hour trip to Copacabana. We had a choice between a little white minibus for 20 Bs. ("We'll get there faster," the driver told us) and a larger bus for 15 Bs. We went with the cheaper one. A decision that we regretted about 30 minutes later. Our bus struggled up to the hill to El Alto where it made the usual stop before starting the journey to Copacabana. There was some sort of accident and our driver got involved. We couldn't see very well but I'm pretty sure it escalated into a fist fight after which our driver was seen speeding away on the back of a police motorcycle. The details of what happened are hazy but we sat there waiting for something, anything to happen for about an hour. Finally the driver came back and we were on our way.

Things they don't tell you about the bus ride to Copacabana: You have to take a ferry. The bus gets on a weird looking flat rectangular boat and crosses a narrow channel. We rode the ferry inside the bus but some people got off. It was a little bit precarious; I was actually all set to open the window and swim for it if something went wrong. They collected a small toll for the ferry (another thing they don't warn you about) and we continued. It was too dark to take pictures but it was a pretty crazy experience.

I've mentioned before that one of my favorite things about traveling is meeting people. Fellow backpackers are just easy to meet; almost everyone is open to chat or have dinner or a drink. When Sarah and I got to Copacabana we didn't really have any plans. We got off the bus in the dark street and started debating which direction we should walk to find a hostel. (Mom, don't worry, this is not as unsafe as it sounds. Copacabana is very small and knows where to direct its tourists. Everything was under control.) Three Argentine guys who had been on our bus came up to us and asked if we knew where we were staying. We didn't and neither did they, so we all five of us started walking toward the main street. We entered a few hostels asking for enough beds for all five of us and they were so nice that when they found a hostel with only a triple room left they wouldn't take it because they wanted to make sure we found a place too. Eventually we found a place with a triple and a double room that was a good enough price and seemed nice enough.

On ranking hostels in Copacabana: "Nice enough" means definitely use a sleeping bag under your sheets because they probably haven't been washed in about 4 years.

We found out that the town of Copacabana shuts down at around 11 pm every night and we had to be back in our hostel by then or we would be sleeping in the street. So the five of us quickly dropped off our stuff and shared a massive pizza. It's always very interesting to share meals and conversations with these people from all over the world you have just met and will probably never see again.

The dock in Copacabana

The next morning we woke up early (only partly because we set an alarm, the other reason we woke up early was because the sound of a television and a child from the next room was inexplicably amplified in our room) and bought a ticket for the boat to Isla del Sol. We also bought our bus ticket to Cusco. We planned to take an overnight bus and had heard horror stories of unpleasant long bus rides in very uncomfortable buses, changing buses multiple times. We didn’t really know where to buy a ticket so we went to the first place we saw with a sign. The woman told us that they were sold out of direct buses but we could take a small minibus to the border about a 15 minute ride, and change buses there. She told us we wouldn’t have to change buses again and like the silly foreigners we are, we believed her.

Anyway, then we got on a boat for the ride to the Isla del Sol. Due to lack of research we had no idea that the boat ride would be 2 hours. It was 2 hours.

Views during the 2 hour boat ride

IMPORTANT RECURRING THEME: This was the first time we saw Carl, a great character through our travels in Peru. He was blond and extremely sunburnt, wearing shorts that exposed huge gashes on his legs. He was chatting animatedly with two girls from Germany who were pleased to be chatting with such an objectively handsome dude. When it got too cold for shorts (definitely within the first 28 seconds of the trip) he explained that he only had one pair of pants for all of his travels and pulled out one glove, he had lost the other. Carl, to put it bluntly, was a hot mess.

Isla del Sol

Once we got to the Isla del Sol we bid farewell to our Argentine buddies and began our hike across the island. We were walking from the north end to the south end where we would catch a boat back to the mainland and get on our bus to Cusco. “Practice for our trek in Peru.” Ha. Ha ha ha. It was beautiful. An island with no cars or buses or motorcycles, full of farms, pigs, and some hippie foreigners.

Banana break: one of the best decisions we made

Lake Titicaca in its full glory

Carl update: Boats only come and go from the island at certain times. If you miss the boat at those times, you’re stuck. On the way down the many steps to the dock at the south end of the island, we ran into Carl. He was very flustered. “When do the boats leave? When do the boats leave?!!!!” We told him they left at 3:30, we had about 15 minutes. “I have to make my bus!” And he charged past us, almost knocking us flat on our faces.

Eventually we made it back and headed straight to catch our bus. We got on a small cramped minibus (everything was extremely disorganized, we filled out our paperwork to cross the border, I had to do it 3 times because I kept messing up.) and suddenly we found ourselves back with CARL! Good thing he was in such a rush before. We chatted with him a little bit about his plans once we all got to Cuzco. He mentioned that he was planning to stay in a hostel called the VIP House that was supposed to be nice and cheap. We made a mental note.

After 15 minutes we were at the border. This is what the border looks like:



It was chaos. We were super excited to be crossing into Peru but everything was a confusing mess of people and officials and buses. We made it through the line to leave Bolivia and walked through the arch into Peru. It was a pretty bizarre feeling. We went through the Peru customs building and got our passports stamped. The Peru side was a bit more organized than the Bolivia side. But I'm learning that things like that are to be expected when you're dealing with Bolivia. This is not a secret. It's just the way it is.



We somehow found the correct bus and it was not even close to as comfortable as we had hoped. We began to realize that maybe we had been cheated like so many other tourists. But it was a bus so it took us to Puno, where we had heard most buses stop on the way to Cusco. And we had to change buses. Then we knew we had been cheated. But what can you do. Nothing, you can do nothing. We had about a 20 minute panic time in the Puno bus station when we thought they had lost our tickets but eventually were on a new bus and tried to get some sleep. We expected to arrive at around 6 in the morning.

We didn't.

We got to Cusco at 4:45 local time. It was raining, eerie, everything was closed, the city shut down. We debated what to do, eventually deciding to head to a hostel to try to get a few hours of sleep. We found a cab and he asked us where we wanted to go. We told him the name of the only hostel we knew: the VIP House. (Thanks, Carl!) We got the only open beds in the hostel, realizing that we might be screwing Carl out of his hostel but it was 4:45 and we were exhausted.

So we slept. And woke up the next morning and explored Cusco, historic capital of the Inca Empire. It is a beautiful city - we took a free walking tour and enjoyed some pisco sours, local food, and markets. It's very clean and very geared towards tourists. (very different from La Paz.) It's also a party city; at night the tourists and locals crowd the discotecas and bars.

Plaza de Armas, the central plaza

Narrow streets

The view

We had two really nice days in Cusco. And then we left for our trek. STAY TUNED!