To Bolivian and Beyond: The Money Taking Special

From Cuzco, we took an eight hour bus ride to Puno, a Peruvian city on Lake Titicaca. Luckily, we got the front seats on our double-decker bus and had a prime view of the dry Peruvian country-side on our way there.

Our seats were the front ones on the top left, amazing ride.

Yep, that's Bobby's feet.

Someone needs a haircut bad

You may have heard of the floating islands on the Lake...well, Puno is the theme park entrance to this old tradition. As soon as we arrived at the busy bus station, we were immediately attacked (in true Peruvian fashion) with several hostel workers buying for our attention and money. Soooo many promises of spacious rooms and hot showers; everyone of them broken of course. However, the verbal competition between the men stopped after these quick introductions...not much else to offer. Luckily, we only really needed a roof over our head. Without possibilities of four-five star hotels, we simply choose the cheapest one.

This simple selection process served us well as we only spent one night in Puno.

View of Puno driving in.

Our adventures in this town revolved around a trip out to the reed islands on Lake Titcaca, let the pictures begin.

Natalie was a big fan of the front of one of the reed boats, pretty scary

Next we had a surprisingly good meal at a local german-inspired restaurant, and a visit with the smallest and almost cutest dog.

Don't worry Marstons..."almost cutest" is not the same as the cutest dog...which of course, is Bailey-Waggles!!


The next day we left the shores of the Peruvian Lake Titicaca side behind for the Bolivian side, where the idea of nickel and diming originated.

The original Copacabana resides just across the Bolivian border which first means, we Americans must PAY PAY PAY at the border crossing. While every other nationality simply needs a stamp to enter Bolivia; Americans need shot records, copies of passports and credit cards, and a visa worth a cool $135 US dollars. We were the last people at the border while the whole bus waited because of our longer visa process. Natalie was running to and from the bus attempting to keep the bus and our bags from leaving, and urging the guards to hurry up before we got stranded. Bobby, on the other hand, was enduring (rather well, we may add) the continuing insults from the Bolivian guards who continually made cry-baby noises at the worried and rushed American. Because of this, our first impression of Bolivia was beautiful scenery filled with money-taking Bolivians not shy about insulting us to our faces (luckily, we couldn't understand the insults). Unfortunately, our last impression of Bolivia was much the same, having to pay extra just to leave the country-Thanks guys!!!

After running to the bus, we crossed the border, to be immediately stopped by a man at the edge of Copacabana. He casually boarded the bus and-as you would guess-demanded money from each passenger "to enter the city's limits." This same trend of unidentified people taking money happened at every possible turn in Bolivia. We would be on a bus ...but then suddendly, wtih no choice we would have to pay a ferry tax. For example, we took a tour to an island, as soon as we arrive, not to our surprise there were people collecting a mysterious island tax. We are talking much less than a dollar here...but it's the principle right? We were constantly joking with other exasperated travelers, that the bus/boat drivers would just tell their buddies to stand on the corner at a certain time...and then they would demand money to pass as if that was the way it always happened, yeah right. Bobby was of course making loud remarks about the smell of scam in the air the whole time.

However, don't let our sarcastic recount of our adventures ruin the beautiful places Bolivia has to offer!

Back to Copacabana. It is a touristy, and almost hip town...we left it immediately.

Instead, we took off after some friend's advice and went to Isla del Sol in the middle of Lake Titicaca. The lake is amazing...it is seriously like an ocean. There are points where you can't see anything but water on the horizon. It is flanked by an amazing snow-capped mountain range on one side. And at such an extreme elevation, the sky is flawless.

We stayed on the south side of Isla Del Sol, where there are bare hosteles dotting the small coast run by local women clad in traditional clothing. Much to our laughter, the island is also home to many donkeys whose mating habits can be heard where ever you may be sleeping.

View from the beach area; this place turned into a ghost town at sunset.

The view from our porch area was amazing.

This part of our trip also marks part two of "Bobby's sick." "Bobby's sick" started in Cuzco, with his first big introduction into "altitude." Bobby was sick then...but he conquered his troubles like a true-wimpy champion and fought off the headaches and naseau. However, on the Isla Del Sol, the alitude got the best of Bobby: he puked.

Bolivians are doing their part to keep the lake clean; that is a huge pile of broken glass bottles that people were smashing against the rocks-way to go guys :(

So long Lake Titicaca....