The weather her in Arequipa is perhaps what most people (i.e. those without light skin and prone to sunburns) would call 'perfect'. In my time here there has been about three or four over cast days and the rest of the time there has been glorious sunshine. No wonder that most of the tourists seem to have bought entire outfits consisting of little more then shorts and flip flops (which do look a little strange on the odd overcast day).
It was a little surprising then when we arrive at Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca at 11:30 PM to find driven rain and freezing temperatures that reminded me of home. Now all we had to do was find a hostel for the night, catch the 6am bus to Desaguedero, cross the border to Bolivia and we were sorted…
The excursion to Bolivia will probably not go down as one of my best thought out travel plans. In fact I only realised that I needed to go to Bolivia a day or two earlier when my soon-to-expire visa date was suddenly brought forward after I committed to teaching English in one of the local language school.
"You start next week, on the 1st" said Samantha, the Sarah Palin look a like who had almost literally begged me to take 3 classes as they were losing 4 teachers over Christmas. "Next week is December?" I replied stupidly, suddenly realising that if that week was full of teaching I wouldn't have a chance to get to renew my visa before the 4th. "Yes," she said smiling, "Not a problem?"
I had got back to the house and tentatively enquired whether it might be possible to get to Bolivia or Chile the next day. Thankfully, despite organisational problems I've had with Jose, his daughter Jerenie has yet to let me down. She sorted everything out and I was more than happy to let her take the lead.
…We selected our hostel in Puno carefully, trying all the nice looking ones first and finding they were full we then went looking for hostels that weren’t too grotty looking. We managed to find one, however they said that unfortunately they only had one bed. I chivalrously offered to sleep on the floor, but when arriving in the cell (the room was about 8 foot by 4 foot and with a hard stone floor and a thin window near the ceiling) I decided to ask if Jerenie minded sharing the bed. This was a little tricky. I have shared beds before when staying at friends with both guys and girls but wasn't too sure what the local custom was and sharing a room might have been awkward enough. I ended up lying on top of the covers and trying my best not to move over the next five hours so as to give Jerenie a chance to sleep.
At 6am we caught a bus to Desaguedero. I had expected we would take one from the main station, a large comfortable one like the one we had taken from Arequipa. The buses to Desaguedero however all turned out to be microbuses, the kind where leg room is not deemed compulsory.
We arrived at the border an hour or two later to find the weather here even worse. The heavens had opened and there was a large queue to enter the border office. The queue lasted about an hour an a half however fortunately there was a roofline we were able to huddle under to avoid getting drenched too much. I had asked if it would be cold before I came so had packed a jumper and a coat (which I ended up giving to Jerenie in an attempt to stop her shivering like a pneumatic drill) however there were several foreigners in the line who evidently hadn't packed anything other than shorts and flip flops.
After getting my passport stamped to leave Peru we crossed on foot over to Bolivia where the incoming line was less then five minutes. Often countries try and make border towns relatively attractive to welcome people to the country. However Bolivia had decided visitors would find a rather confusing pueblo with no clear main road, signs or tourist information and a few locals selling confectionary for half the price of the same thing in Peru much more preferable.
We wondered around the pueblo for about 15 minutes before stumbling across a busy main road with various touts offering taxis and microbuses to La Paz and other destinations. We were unsure where to go and the three hour trip to La Paz seemed a little too long for a day trip. There was meant to be a nice touristy town about an hour away so we made enquiries into this only to find the price for the bus horrendously inflated with the drivers asking for more money then our coazy 5 hour Arequipa-Puno bus had been. The weather had not got any better and neither of us had slept well/at all the pervious night so after half an hour we decided to leave.
Perhaps another time Bolivia.
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