The bus drive to Puno was through to stunning landscapes and after my arrival I went to a small Pizza dinner with the Bavarian guys Roland and Markus. Puno was not a special city, but the short trip to the the floating islands „Uros“ was great. These islands are built of reed and this has to be renewed from time to time due to the erosion of the water. We visited 2 islands and learnt how they build the islands, how they fish and how they live (small hats of around 10 square meters for the whole family). Their main profit comes nowadays definitively from tourism - they sell their handcraft things and were singing songs for us. The kids can go there to primary school, but for secondary and university they have to take a boat every day to Puno. There are no real activities, so the kids play just in the nature and if the girls and boys are dating, they take a small boat and disappear in the reed.
Nice experience to see, but I couldn’t imagine to live like they do.
Around midday we took a bus to Copacabana - emotional moment for me, leaving my „second home“ Peru and entering into Bolivia - getting a new stamp into the passport! It was almost sunset time, so we ordered some drinks in a restaurant with a scenic view and just enjoyed. Then the first bad experience - we went to a restaurant together with some people (amongst others Steffi and Armin, a German couple I’m traveling now for some days with) and we had to wait 1h for drinks and 2h for meal - compared with the very unfriendly waiters… Not the best start for Bolivia. At least the food was good.
The next day Roland, Markus and myself walked around the city (again super unfriendly people, probably the unfriendliest I’ve ever met), and we relaxed „on the beach“ of the Titicaca Lake. It was not super hot, but we all got sunburned, as we are on almost 4000m altitude. As my cold was getting worse, I spent the afternoon in the bed and we went again out for sunset with beer and a very good dinner at „La Orilla“ afterwards - with the first friendly persons in Bolivia.
Still feeling quite sick the next morning, we took a boat to the „Isla del Sol“, a small island close by without cars but a lot of animals, nature, mountains… There we met again with Armin and Steffi. Our hostel was on the top of the island, very exhausting hiking up with the big monster bag pack in this high. But worth it due to the views. We went for lunch, I ate a delicious trout (Trucha), very typical there. In the end we just did a very short hike to an old ruin. For sunset and dinner we met at the restaurant „Las Velas“ (the candles). This is a restaurant without any electricity and the light is - acc. to the name - only coming from candles, very romantic. The chefs (a couple from la Paz) cook with gas and fire - and surprisingly they are super friendly.
The next morning after breakfast we „hiked“ down to the boats to get back to Copacabana and then by bus to La Paz - 3989m altitude. I booked an AirBnB for the five of us - this was amazing! 26th floor penthouse flat with everything you need. The first evening we spent at home, eating delicious Burger King menus, listening to German music (PUR!!) and drinking a lot of beer while playing cards. *funny* Slowing down a bit, we had a very late breakfast on Sunday morning, Steffi and myself - women!) planned the day and we went to the centre: booking the Death Road for Markus, Roland and myself, visited the witches market (Mercado de Brujas), looking for a post box without success (Sunday), walking through the „Calle Jaén“ (a nice street with bars and restaurants, but closed on Sunday), buying bus tickets for the boys to Cusco, realizing there are no buses to Uyuni on the day, so I booked a flight (45min instead of 12h bus) and finally taking the cable car (red line) up to „El Alto“, a poor part of La Paz. We enjoyed the view over the city and saw a crazy huge cemetery under us. The cable cars are kind of public transport for the locals and they are building more and more - worth in this crazy traffic. After this exhausting day we bought food to cook at our house and used the evening for some more planning. Armin and Steffi left the next day, the boys and myself went to the Death Road. WOW - what an experience! Biking down from 4700m altitude down to the jungle on about 1200m altitude - 64km, on a unpaved road. The name Death Road is coming from historic reasons - a lot of persons died there - mainly earlier, when it was a public street for cars, buses etc. Nowadays it’s used as a touristic attraction, mountain biking and getting an adrenaline kick ;-)
Being back in our home (with a new T-Shirt and a DVD full of pictures) we used some time to do the laundry, packing our things and relaxing. I left very early in the morning to catch my plane to Uyuni, where I met this morning - as planned - again with Steffi and Armin. To celebrate life and the sun, we started with some beer late morning - still sitting there with my bottle of Corona in front of me.
Tomorrow morning we start the 3-day tour through the Uyuni salt flats - looking forward to this! *exited* From there we will directly head over to Chile - San Pedro de Atacama - collecting another new stamp - where I will rest for some days…
Bolivia has a wonderful landscape, the people are in general not that friendly and warm like in Peru. Can you be homesick to a country where you lived in for 3 months? I think YES…
Hear you soon!!
PS: I already tried to upload this since yesterday early afternoon, but as always in Bolivia, the WiFi connection is too bad… Afterwards we went out for dinner, not easy to find something which looks nice here, too touristic. In the end we had another stupid experience here with unfriendly Bolivians - or maybe I have to correct myself, unfriendly Bolivian women. We wanted to pay separately, but they told us they have no change at all. I was super angry, because we were waiting very long for the food which was not very delicious and then they cannot give change to our money. I told her to leave, but then she wanted to call the police, so the four of us put all our small money together and we made it on the cent. No we have to calculate again between us… *grrr*
3 days more until Chile, let’s see how they behave ;-)