Journey: Puno to La Paz via Copacabana
So after about 5 weeks in Peru it was time to leave and cross the border into Bolivia. Peru was great to see, the highlights getting better and better the further south I travelled, but Bolivia awaited...
The border crossing was fairly simple, with less quizical looks when confronted with my awful and unrepresentative passport photo than had been the case when entering Peru!
It was then onto Copacabana, a small, laid-back touristy town which was asked in sun and fronted onto the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca (incidentally, Bolivia apparently has a navy despite being a land-locked country just to patrol the border of the lake with Peru). We stayed for lunch and then continued the beautiful journey circling the edge of this great lake.
After a short while we came to a point at which we needed to cross a narrow part of the lake itself. We were ordered off the bus and as we took a small speedboat across the buses were loaded onto effectively a few planks of wood tied together. Somehow these were sufficient to take the weight of the bus and rather than sinking it made it across! At the other side on the main plaza stood a small minibus which had been decorated in all sorts of wonderful ways, extremely colourful and very odd. Perhaps if was soon to be blessed by a priest to wish it good luck on itsd future journeys as I have heard happens here!
It was then onto a road which ran parallel to a few snow-capped mountians before we entered La Paz from above, allowing us great views of the sprawling endless city as we circled down into it. Welcome to the contrasts of Bolivia!
