An Emmerous Adventure

It´s 6 am or something like that and I just got off a bus ride on one of the worst roads in the world, it was unsealed for 15 hours. So this is by far the best time to update the blog.

I think I left you in Cuzco (woops, 2 weeks ago) so I´ll go from there.
Left Cuzco by train for Puno. It was a really lovely journey, I´ll do train over bus any day. Puno on the other hand, was not so nice. Other people said it wasn´t too bad and I didn´t hit the main street, but it didn´t seem like much fun and the room i stayed in had no windows which was strange.

The next day I took a morning tour to the floating Uros islands which was really interesting, it´s such a strange way of life. Stepping on the reed islands was so odd, really squishy.
In the afternoon I headed for Copa, Copacabana (actually just Copacabana) in Bolivia, where i did no fall in love. It´s a really nice place, much more fantastic than Puno. Crossing the border was interesting. I didn´t have too much trouble apart from a rather vigorous search of my bag, but Owain (from Wales who I met in Cuzco) who I was traveling with from Puno, had lost his Immigration card which caused all sorts of trouble, but we eventually go through. We also met Lucy and Morgan from the UK and two American girls so we all shared 2 rooms at a hotel and had some dinner together. Copacabana is like the Byron Bay of Bolivia it seems.
It took us a couple of days to get to the Island of the sun, but when we did it was amazing, so beautiful. It´s on Lake Titicaca, which is the highest navigable lake in the world and fresh water, which blew my mind to see it all just sitting there. Even though Bolivia is a landlocked country, they have a navy (which we saw) on lake Titicaca.
Owain, Morgan, Lucy and I all headed off to La Paz after 3 days in Copacabana. During the bus ride we had to get off and get on a boat in order to cross the lake. Our bus got on another boat and we could see people bailing water out of this dodgy barge that our boat was on. It was worrying.
BUT THEN WE WERE IN LA PAZ!

I´m just going to do highlights from La Paz as I spent a crazy week there.

*Riding down the world´s most dangerous road – then falling off. Well, i didn´t fall off the road (400m drop) but rather the bike. It was such an amazing time. The first part is sealed road and you go SO fast, then it gets off road and you´re on a one lane unsealed road with a few other cars and other bikes with an almost shear drop beside you. I´ve got photos, but they will have to be shown upon my return as they are on CD and about to be on their way to Sydney.
*Spending almost a whole day at the Mercado Negro (Black Market) looking through fake DVD stalls with Owain and Patrick in search of Anchorman, The Wedding Crashers and the Big Lebowski among other things. We found the first two but no luck with the third. Also that day – maybe eating Cat in a dodgy underground restaurant.
*Watching good and bad, mostly bad, movies (including snakes on a plane) at the hostel with big groups of people.
* A costume party at the hostel and spending a whole day (again) with Patrick, Owain and Stefan trying to find costumes. We found some pretty cool stuff that only photos can explain, therefore they will be coming soon.
*Going out and enjoying the crazy La Paz night life.
*Illegal activities that should not be mentioned in this rather public place.
*Trying to see a football game with the boys and going to the stadium 4 days in a row. The first two times we were confused about the day, the third it was canceled so instead we bought some nasty premixed cuba libre (2 liters for 25 bolivianos, about $4 or $5) and played Nintendo Wii tennis and bowling for an hour, then told bad jokes and just stood around on the street for an hour, then went to Karaoke in a place called Love City. That was a good night.
The next day the football was actually on and it was also fantastic, of cold. We ended up going for The Strongest, who won, even if we only ended up going for them because we were in their section, it was great.
*The witches market where I have seen more dried Llama fetuses than I care to.
*Meeting some really rocking people. I spent a whole lot of time with Owain, Patrick (US) and Stefan (UK) who I had met in Cuzco. They are all traveling alone but are now basically doing Bolivia together. Also saw some other folks from Cuzco and made all sorts of exciting new friends.

Well, that´s all i can remember right now.
I have to go and try to get a Visa for Brazil now, and some breakfast.
I´ll do the Pampas and some photos in the next few days.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 4:53 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.