Music and Passion were always the fashion at the Copaaa - They fell in love

Well, it´s October 16th now and Bolivia has come and gone.

Since Macchu Picchu we headed back to Cusco, hung out there for a day or so and jumped ship to Copacabana, Bolivia. It´s a tiny town situated on Lake Titicaca, which is more like an ocean than a lake. It also has Bolivia´s navy station on it. Why a landlocked country needs a navy beats me? But the 15 year old boys in charge of this navy seem to be doing a swell job taking care of their 1 bus and 2 sixteen ft boats. Anyhow, we stayed at a nice place that our guide book called a Splurge! ... at $16 a night with a magnificent view of the lake (and the navy base).
Peru was beautiful and fun while it lasted, Bolivia on the other hand ...
One of the first things we see getting off the bus and heading up to our hostel was an little old Inca woman, dressed in her Sundays best (including her little top hat) squatting in front of a bus to take a piss on the street.
Welcome to Bolivia!
Copacabana is nice though. A retreat from the busy cities, it had hot weather with a cooling breeze and hammoks all over to laze around and read a book. Kevin makes the purchase of a lifetime. A pipe made of Llama bone with a monkey skull on top wearing a crown of parrot feathers. (It is later to be taken away by the Chilean officials.) On lake Titicaca there is an Island of the Sun that is a very popular tourist destination. We figure we might as well go see what the hype is about. After an hour and a half boat ride there, (which only should have taken 20 min tops but the cheap bastards only used a 55hp engine rather than the 150hp engine they had on board) we arrived. Because it took so long and the tour is only 4 hours, we had 30 min to have a picinic on the island before we took the 1.5hr journey back. Turned out okay though because we had time to hike the mountain behind the hostel and watch the sunset with a little bit of wine.

The next day we´re off to La Paz with our booked tickets in hand. ... So we thought. Dun Dun Duuunnnn.. The lady at the ticket office wrote the wrong date on our ticket. The current date instead of the next day. Because we never know if it´s Tuesday or Friday, we naturally didn´t notice. When we try to board the bus, she says ¨no, it´s not valid.¨ Of course not. Kevin, with his little knowledge in Spanish, tries to reason with her explaining that it was her error and the ticket hadn´t been tampered with or used, so why is it a problem? The lady responds ¨buy new ticket.¨ Of course, as reasonable as always, Kevin yells and threatens to steal something. He spots her phone. Perfect. He begins unplugging it from the wall all the while shouting ¨FINE, I´m taking your phone!!!! What are you gonna do about it?¨ Lisa had to scream at him to put it back. After all, what the hell are we gonna do with a phone and no bus ticket? Lisa pleads to the woman using calm, nice words and sure enough, we´re allowed on the bus. (Although by this time we´ve gathered a crowd of touristic onlookers and the Inca woman is probably very embarrased)

We arrive in La Paz which is even shittier than Lima. We immediatly try to find a way out. Nothing so say really. We wandered the streets checking out the Llama Fetuses and dead Armadillos the Witches Market had to offer and then would go back to our hostel to drink the night away with the rest of the tourists. Time to hop on another bus, this time with an agenda in mind. We´re off to see the Salt Flats of Uyuni. The bus ride there is 12hrs, 10 of which were like tour bus off-roading. Nothing but bumpy gravel roads through the desert. We arrive safely in the tiny, bitter cold town of Uyuni, Bolivia only after our bus gets stuck in a pothole in the middle of the desert and everyone has to unload while the driver and crew dig the bus out. We booked a promising 3d-2n 4x4 adventure across the Salar de Uyuni. At least it looked promising.

Day 1
It´s good fun. We share our vehicle with 4 Ausies and make our way through the Salar. It´s beautiful. It looked as if the horizon stretched on for days and days. We stopped, hiked an island made of fossilized coral, ate lunch and saw hundreds of cacti. We tried to take some interesting pictures but it was difficult and didn´t work out as well as planned. Still good fun though. That night was stayed at a Salt Hostel. Everything was made of salt. Salt tables, salt chairs, salt bar, salt bricks upon which our matresses were laid and salt was strewn all across the floor that you would kick up everytime you took a step. You could taste the salt with every breath.

Day 2
Rise and shine and it´s off to see Lagoons all day. At these lagoons we were witness to tons of flamingos in their natural habitat. Saw a fox, and a dessert rabbit. Lots of nature in day 2. We also saw the worlds highest active volcano. Naturally, we stop to take photos and climb some rocks. Oh ... we also stopped by the famous ¨rock tree¨. Everyone was so amazed with this rock that looks like a tree ... we, however, saw it as ¨just another rock¨. By the end of this day, we had reached an altitude of more than 5000m and Kevin becomes deathly ill. Because we all thought it was the altitude taking a toll on him, we made him sniff garlic and eat Coca leaves which turned out made him want to puke more. Okay, it´s not altitude. It could be because all the chicken we´ve been eating for lunch has been strapped to the roof for the past 2 days driving through the desert, but it´s hard to say. We never did figure it out.

Day 3
Wake up at 430 in 15 below weather to go see geysers. Kevin, trying not to die, stays in the car. We walk around, take pictures, watch the sun rise. The geysers aren´t really geysers at all. All they are all steam coming from the ground and bubbling water. No shooting water into the air like Yellowstone National Park, ... but Lisa doesn´t care. She´s never seen any sort of geysers before. Granted, it was slightly lame and very stinky, but interesting to see none the less.

By mid-day we´ve reached the Bolivian border and grab a bus into Chile. The difference between the 2 countries is HUGE. Bolivia being the poorest country in South America, Chile being one of the richest. We hadn´t driven on paved road since Peru. Who knew asphalt could be such a treat!! The Chilean border is apparently very strict about what comes into their country so everyone gets individually searched. This is when the afforementioned pipe gets seized. The customs officials probably used it to get high after we left. Bastards.

By this time, Lisa is a little bit sick also so we opt to stay in a nice hotel with a pool until we recover. San Pedro, Chile is a cute little tourist town. Everything is really expensive ($10 for a meal instead of $4) so we sit back and relax and not do much, just get better. We get our laundry done at this place where is $10 a load instead of the $3 that we are used to paying. We get all our clothes back with strange markings on all the tags. It wouldn´t have been a big deal but then they wrote this mark (in permanent red ink I might add) onto the front of Kevins UnderArmour shirt, directly in the middle of the logo. They also write it on the tag of Kevins white shirt which ended up soaking through and staining the other side of the shirt. We go back to complain but the woman doesn´t care. This time is Lisa´s turn to be completely irrational. She tries, in broken spanish, to say please give me some of my money back. This is ridiculous, you ruined my clothes. After a small while of patience it turns into ¨tu stupido, i´m taking this¨ ... as she grabs a bag of someone elses laundry and storms out. Shit, she forgot her backpack in there. Time to go back for it but by now the small spanish woman is holding onto it for dear life until she gives the stolen laundry back. Finally, Lisa puts up such a fuss she gets 1000 pesos back. A whole $2.

We´ve had enough of San Pedro, it´s off to La Serena to see the ocean again. Oh how we miss the ocean.