here, there, everywhere

The day after we got back from Titicaca, we set out on a bus to La Paz! I'd been pretty nervous about the border crossing, as there is a wealth of (mis)information floating about on the internet about the American visa needed to enter the country, but it turned out getting the stamp was probably the most straightforward part of our journey.  From Puno, we piled into a slightly rickety bus packed with tourists, and drove about two hours to the border, where we hopped off, stamped ourselves out of Peru in two different offices, than walked into Bolivia (photo above courtesy of Iain) and got ourselves stamped into Bolivia. For me and all others from the States, this meant filling out a two minute form, handing over $135 in crisp American bills (they are not kidding about this one), a passport photo and a photocopy of my passport (and, despite rumors floating about the internet about proof of onward travel or yellow fever vaccines - absolutely nothing else. It was very easy, though less easy for the poor Hong Kong guy who'd been traveling with us, and who got knocked back all the way to Puno to get a proper Hong Kong visa sorted.) 

From the border, we drove a few more minutes onward into beachy, lakeside Copacabana, where we had just enough time to snap a few photos and order a plate of greasy, bland french fries. Our bus had stalled and slid backwards a bit when we went up a hill into town, so we were a bit relieved to be transferring buses after lunch, at least until we saw our new bus, which was ricketier. 

In the end, we pulled into La Paz at about 6:30 in the evening, just in time to see the sun starting to set over the city as we descended into it. So that was our first day in Bolivia! La Paz at night felt a world away from the sleepy streets of Puno or the whitewashed buildings of Cusco, and I always get a huge rush when I set foot in a new place for the first time, so it turned out to be a pretty good, if a bit more eventful than anticipated day. 

I don't have as many photos of the second non-floating island we visited, in part because I didn't really like it as much. Taquile is a bit lusher than Amantani, and quite possibly objectively prettier, but by the time we got there, I was a bit burned out on being on a tour and bracing myself for a island even more touristy than Amantani. 

Weirdly, we saw almost no people there who were not tourists, so I'm sure other people visiting on other days had a completely different experience than we did, but the whole thing had slightly ghost-townish feeling to it. 

After hiking across the island, stopping for lunch and listening to a pretty long description of what the different men's hats on the island symbolized (okay, I did like this part; life would be so much easier at home if people had hats to signify whether they were single and looking, or married), we hopped back onto our boat for the three hour ride back to Puno. 

After the Uros Islands, our boat (named Royal Caribbean, by the way) chugged three more hours over increasingly choppy waters to the comparatively bleak island of Amantani, where we waited awkwardly in front of a gathering crowd of local families, and our guide called our names one by one, matching us up with our hosts. There aren't any hostels on the island, so guests instead have little choice but to do a homestay with a local family who has a room especially set aside for tourists. 

Fortunately, our family (Javier and Mathilde, above) turned out to be quite friendly. Other than buying some of their handknit hats and making small talk with them and their four year old (camera shy) son Lieber, there wasn't much else to do on Amantani except hike up the two local hills, Pachapapa and Pachamama. 

The walk up Pachapapa is flanked by more women and girls selling more bracelets and hats. Leslie and Nilda, above, sold me a keychain that looked like a cross between a sad raindrop and a ghost, and later followed us down the mountain in the dark, giggling, asking for our names, for English translations of Spanish words, and then abruptly demanded a sol in exchange for their names, which of course they'd already told us. I tried to ask for a sol in exchange for my name back, but apparently my name doesn't command a particularly high price out there. In any case, we parted on friendly enough terms, but it was still a bit awkward. Though I wouldn't put it past my terrible Spanish to find out that we'd actually been talking about something else entirely different, so who knows. 

Our second day in Puno, we went on a two day tour of Lake Titicaca itself, which began with a stop at the floating, manmade Uros Islands: 

As your boat draws closer to the islands, the women all stand on the banks waving and calling out hello in Aymara - it's a very strange feeling, making the whole trip feel vaguely theme-park-ish. On the plus side, I now know how to say hello in Aymara. 

above: check out the solar panel behind the guy! 

Once on the island, we were given a presentation on how the islands were made using a miniature island with all the materials, complete with little tiny reed houses and - even better - tiny dolls wearing the same hat as the islander showing us how they built everything. We kept waiting for tiny dolls of tourists and a tour guide, but they never showed up. 

above: Olga, who sold me a miniature straw boat. 

Afterwards, we were given time to poke around the island and look inside the houses, which felt even stranger, since as far as I know the people showing us around actually lived there. We didn't poke around too much (though I did buy a miniature straw boat from one of the ladies, above) but it was cool just walking around on the reeds -your feet sink unnervingly deep into them with each step, so it takes some getting used to. 

Touristy as the experience was (and I'm okay with that - I'd rather show up in a place expecting tourists than go bug some people who weren't), the manmade islands were definitely unlike anything I'd ever seen. 

Our first stop after leaving Ollanta was Puno; the first day, still bleary after our night bus dropped us off at five in the morning, we went to the nearby pre-Incan tombs at Sillustani, which overlook Lake Titicaca. 

The ruins below are what (I think?) the ruins above look like on the inside. Also, apparently they're all giant phallic symbols. 

As we were leaving, I stopped to take a picture of this ... alpaca? Llama? (I'm a little shaky on my camelids) and this little girl ran over, stared at me for a minute, then started picking her nose.