Emily in Argentina: Epic South American Adventure II: Puno, Lake Titicaca, and Bolivia

The day after the Inka Trail we got up very early again to catch an 8am bus to Puno, Peru to see Lake Titicaca. We got there on time, but the six-hour bus ride became an eight-hour bus ride due to a giant open air market taking place in one of the small towns we passed that caused an hour and a half traffic standstill. We made it though and went to check into our nasty hostel, which apparently had water problems, and so we were promoted for free to a much nicer hotel closer to the center of town. Excellent luck. The people there were also incredibly helpful, and they even called various bus stations for us so we could plan the rest of our trip since we revised our plan about ten times (we were originally going to visit a friend in Santa Cruz in eastern Bolivia but we didn’t have enough time). After planning out the rest of our trip by bus back toward Buenos Aires, we had an excellent dinner I in the main square, I dealt with some fun credit card issues since I forgot to tell them I was leaving Argentina (oops), and we went to be early so we could wake up early as usual.

The following day we left for our Lake Titicaca tour, which involved visiting the floating reed islands of the Uros people as well as the natural islands Taquile and Amantani. The floating islands were of course very interesting as they were completely made of reeds woven together by the Uros people that lived there, and they also had reed boats to travel between the various islands. There are about 1,500 people total living on the islands, with about eight families per island. We got to meet some of the people that lived there and see their homes, even try on their very colorful clothing. Next, we took a two hour trip boat trip to Taquile, where another indigenous group showed us their style of dance as well as their incredible textiles weaved by the women that live there. We ate fish and soup for lunch, then saw the main plaza and some incredible views of the lake and the mountains of Bolivia in the distance on the other side. Our next stop, after another hour by boat, was the island of Amantani. Here, we met our host families with whom we spent the night; ours was a man named Alfredo and his wife and six-year-old daughter, Alison. An Austrian couple, Ursula and Klause, stayed there as well, and the four of us played with Alison and her cousin for a few hours before dinner. They once again dressed us in traditional clothing and we went to meet with the other families and tourists who were staying there to dance and listen to their music around a fire (in the freezing cold) before bed. The next day we woke up for breakfast and then climbed to the top of the island for some incredible views of Taquile, the lake, and the mountains on the Bolivian side. It was nice also not to be completely exhausted after climbing since, compared to the Inka Trail hike, even the altitude wasn’t too bad. We had some free time so Ben and I went to sit on the dock and reminisce about our respective lakes (he’s from Milwaukee) and how soon we get to see them! We had a three hour boat ride back to Puno, then ate at our favorite restaurant in the plaza again to celebrate our time in Peru before Bolivia the next day.

Bolivia was actually kind of a disaster, starting with the fact that Ben had to essentially bribe the Immigration people to let him in without the Yellow Fever vaccine and then, of course, a three hour bus ride from Copacabana to La Paz becoming five. We also had to get off the bus, without warning, and take a ferry across part of the lake to meet the bus again on the other side… random. We had crackers, cookies, and Pringles for lunch, too, since there wasn’t enough time to wait for the food we ordered for lunch between the bus to Copacabana and the one from there to La Paz. We survived though, and revamped our plan again to take advantage of the fact that we were in La Paz and had paid 135 US dollars just to get into the country by deciding to stay a day in the city and take a bus straight to Villazón on the Argentine border the next day. Our day in La Paz started out with an excellent breakfast of eggs, granola and fruit salad, fresh banana and papaya juice, bread, and banana bread and then we killed time by walking around the city all day until our city tour. The first half of the tour was really interesting since we saw the southern part of the city and Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), but the second part was downtown and we spent the entire hour and a half literally sitting in traffic caused by a protest… I felt like I was back in Buenos Aires, although such protests or manifestaciones are common all over South America it seems. We skipped out on the tour early and ate before our night mare bus ride to Villazón, which was supposed to be 18 but, again, was 20 hours since we sat in La Paz traffic for the first two hours. The bus was supposed to have had heat, but since it didn’t, we spent the night trying to sleep in about 35 or 40 degrees. There wasn’t a bathroom, which was pretty annoying, and by the end of the ride the TV above Ben’s head (which of course didn’t work) had shaken so loose that it threatened to fall on him and he had to move. The window next to me wasn’t sealed very well, so I had a nice, cold breeze on me all night and then dust all over me once we got into the southern part of the country and it was windy and dry.

We did, however, live through this experience and were beyond glad to make it back into Argentina where we know what to expect. We crossed into Argentina without problems but we did, however, have to wait an hour and a half in the freezing wind because a drunk guy had lost his ID and all of his papers and was holding up the line into Argentine Immigration… his friend (whom Ben had met on the other bus) and a VERY Argentine couple entertained us and three other American students by making very politically incorrect jokes, drinking mate, and using every Argentine phrase I have ever heard. This made me even gladder to be back, and eventually we figured out that we could essentially jump the line since we had walked across the border instead of being bused across and we made it, legally, into La Quiaca, Argentina. We ate all we could with the few Argentine pesos we had and transferred our bus tickets (we had missed our original one due to the line), then got on a much warmer and more comfortable bus to Jujuy.