Destination 17 - BOLIVIA!
 
Day 19 - Crossing the border and onto La Paz, Bolivia, the highest capital city in the world at 4000 metres altitude!
 
Today was to be a long day crossing the border 'Anneka Rice' style, local minibus then local bus then another local bus then a boat then another bus ..... This was going to be a long day!
 
The morning saw us boarding the first local bus of the day then skirting the edge of Lake Titicaca for two hours towards the border near the lake with Bolivia. With rocky mountains on one side and the glistening deep blue lake on the other, it was a beautiful ride to say the least and all in all we would be sad to leave Peru. The border was fun, we exited Peru, walked through the usual no man's land then through the arch to Bolivia,(where Kieron humoured us again by saying 'Bolivia was full!'), next the fun started as Aggie was trying to go through on her Irish passport to save paying the 100 dollar visa (for some reason Americans have to pay a visa) this created lots of problems so we had to leave Bilynda with them whilst the Bolivians were trying to confiscate her passport! Then the bus driver said (even though my book advised it was illegal to do so) that we all had to pay Bolivian tax to get into the town of Copacabana in Bolivia where our bus journey ended. Reluctantly we paid it in the end (and gritted our teeth as the bus driver pocketed half the money!!!) to only then go about a minute in the bus where we could have just got off and said sod them, not paid the tax and walked! Already the start of our introduction to Bolivia was pretty corrupt and not too good..... Aggy, Robert and Belynda finally arrived and Aggy thankfully had got her passport back if she paid 50 dollars which the police then pocketed with the Peruvian police ....aaah!!
 
Copacabana was a small town with just a few streets which were deserted and quiet. We found lunch at a café and it was great to see that the cost of food here matched bolivianos for soles ie nearly 3x less of Peru so eating more was something Ads definitely was looking forward to here! Next we had to hike with all our luggage for about half an hour to the so called local bus we were told was 4 blocks away. Then there weren't enough seats on this family affair local run bus even though Belynda had reserved them so on the floor she sat...things weren't improving. Sadly for me though this run down bus with windows that opened and doors that didn't shut, I was very happy and all the fresh air made coping with the altitude easier! The landscape wasn't as high as Peru but around us were rolling brown hills and deserted areas in amongst the stunning Lake Titicaca that we winded round seeing even more smaller stunning islands within it. Then we reached the local car ferry which was hilarious, this consisted of us getting off the bus to catch a small boat as staying on the coach was not deemed safe which when we saw our boat riding at speed onto some floating wooden platform so that the boat could get a good run up then as it floated aimlessly in the river and looked like it was going to sink we were all so glad we didn't stay on it! 10 minutes and lots of fumes later we were across the lake, sampling the grim local toilets with water bucket for flushing and a VERY bad smell, then back on our bus it was which had actually made it, heading for La Paz .
 
2 hours saw us winding through arid remote and quite mountainous brown landscape the remoteness of any small villages compared to Peru surprising us. Soon though we were nearing La Paz and the scene ahead was quite the opposite!! I am not sure if it is because you drive in at 4000 metres and can see the entire valley below you but this place was absolutely huge and spread across and up the valleys for miles! It seemed like the biggest developing country capital we had seen on our journey to date and the red brick houses too were a far cry from what we had seen in Peru. Although Bolivia is said to be the poorer of the two, so far the style of housing and size of the city made it feel the opposite, only time would tell as we explored the country more. The setting of La Paz was stunning though, a city, the highest capital in the world set within the valley surrounded by beautiful snow capped peaks which as we were already so high meant that we were almost at the level of the peaks itself which was very weird to say the least and VERY cold!!
 
The city didn't have the charm and touristic feeling of somewhere like Cuzco but it had a lively lived in local feel which Ads and I liked instantly, craziness of cars and millions of collectivo's dominating the roads with mad, bright striped and old local jam packed buses also, old ladies wrapped in 4 or 5 blankets sat on the side of the street selling everything from potatoes to paint colours and whilst they looked so poverty stricken and cold, they were a true reflection of the life here which made the reality of this city a truer reflection than if it had totally been dominated by tourism like Cuzco in Peru had . The hecticness was a new experience for a while also.
 
Hiking to our hotel, which without doubts was unexpectedly beautiful and one of the best yet on this trip, we all got ready for the briefing of..... The ultimate in mountain biking....................DEATH ROAD!!
 
I can sum up our briefing in a few words the bike company takes no responsibility whatsoever for anything so if anything goes wrong ie you fall off the road down the 1000ft drop that's your tough sh~t. Sign the form be happy about the free t-shirt and get on with it. So even with Nik questioning the poor lady about para 3 section a part 4 sub section ii we all signed the forms and paid our monies. We also got to meet the new arrivals for the rest of our trip, a really cool Ozzie couple Pete and Hayley, Hayley was our first celeb on the trip as she had been on Australian Big Brother recently so all the Ozzies on the trip recognised her instantly whilst the rest of us Brits/Irish/Americans were totally oblivious, then two funny ozzie guys Jason and Ash with Pam and Kedre from Canada. We were now back up to full numbers! After the largest pizza Nik and I had eaten since we had been away it was to bed and an early start. Setting my alarm on my mobile for 5.30am Nik and I fell sound asleep pretty tired from the last few days exertions.