Adventures in Traveling

Friday was spent getting from our little island to Copacabana in Bolivia. (Sorry, not that Copacabana.) It was a little more exciting than I expected. We had to take the boat back to Puno, as it is impossible to get to Bolivia by boat. When we got to the docks, there were two boats. One that was virtually empty, save for a few tourists, and one that was already packed with locals and their huge bags of goods they were taking to the mainland. We, apparently, needed to be on the boat packed with locals. Problem was, there were no seats left. That doesn't stop Peruvians, though. They had us sit on the top of the boat, with the bags of fish, potatoes, and who knows what else. The wind made it very, very cold up there, and it wasn't exactly comfortable to sit on a sack of potatoes, or to have a front row seat for all the men urinating off the front of the boat, but I chalked it up to an experience you can't have anywhere else. To pass the three hours, Val, Peter, and I played that celebrity name game, where you name a celebrity, then the next person names a celebrity whose first name begins with the same letter as the previous celebrity's last name. I don't know how we did it, but we played that game for three solid hours. We just never stopped. We named every major celebrity, minor celebrity, dead people, and the entire royal family. "Good to know the royal family is good for something," said Peter.
After docking at Puno, we said our goodbyes to Al, who was off to La Paz, and headed for the bus station to catch a bus to the Bolivian border. The bus ride was supposed to take 2 hours, but we got stuck in a traffic jam on a dirt road when a truck got stuck in the world's largest pothole and had to be pulled out. While stopped, we watched in awe as a man got out of his bus or truck, walk into the field right next to the road, pull his pants down, squat... and take a dump. And how. I get performance anxiety when there's someone in the next stall, but this man has no problems going in a field with a line of traffic and literally hundreds of eyes watching him. I don't know if that's something to be admired or pitied. (I've been in South America too long to be all that shocked, sadly.)
We finally reached the border about 3 hours after leaving Puno. The first obstacle was to get out of Peru. Peter and I both had expired Visas, and therefore had to pay $1 a day over our 90 days. I went to hand the man my $9, but he told me I had to pay at the bank. Great, where's the bank? It was in the last town, and required taking a combi (a large van, or a very small bus, depending on how you like to think about it). We had less than an hour before the Bolivian border closed for business, so this was not good news. Peter and I hopped in the combi for the 5 minute drive back to the last town, which is truly a dead end town. The driver dropped us off in the town square, which was pretty deserted. We asked him to wait for us; he said he would wait for only a minute, but he sped off pretty quickly. Then, as if I we were in The Amazing Race, Peter and I took off in a run across the square to the bank. The woman in front of us turned around, saw us running, dropped all her bags in the street, and started running too. Peter yelled after her, "We're not trying to race you!," but of course she didn't understand. She thought it was hilarious, and burst into giggles when we got into the bank. Peter and I were not as amused. Finally, after returning to the border, being forced to go across the street to make three copies of almost every page in my passport, they let us out of Peru. Now it was Bolivia's turn.
Peter is British and Jess Canadian, so they got their passports stamps and were able to walk through. Val and I, however, are evil Americans and therefore must pay (literally!) for it. We had to show copies of a credit card, hotel reservations and a bus return (fabricated for us by the travel agency housed in my school), extra paperwork, and the kicker: $100 in cash. I wanted to tell them two things: 1. I voted democrat in the last two presidential elections (and in the first one, my vote apparently didn't even count). 2. The light is at the end of the tunnel! By next year, we'll have a new president and be a kinder, gentler nation! But I didn't think that would really help. The border guard took a little too much joy in taking our money. He even told Val that one of the twenty dollar bills she handed him wasn't good enough for Bolivia. Excuse me? You demand we pay you in our money, then tell us it isn't good enough? Drop the God complex, buddy. I handed over my $100 and can now come and go into Bolivia for the next 5 years. (Thank you, Mr. President. Your bill is in the mail.)
There were fiestas going on in Copacabana, so we had a bit more difficulty finding a hostal than we would have thought. We had to stay in a hotel for slightly more money, (about the equivalent of $5-6 more.) After a fantastic Mexican dinner (and if you think all food in South America is Mexican, you are wrong. Very, very wrong.), we walked around to check out the fiestas. It was basically several marching-style bands playing all at the same time, while local Bolivians danced around drunkenly. Peter and I, of course, decided to join them. The locals loved this. They taught us a few moves, we taught them a few moves, they gave us a few drinks. Several of them even asked to have their pictures taken with us. Instant celebrities.
Later, as we were falling asleep in the hotel room, Val suddenly said, "No one mentioned Julia Roberts today." Maybe next time. If there is a next time...