Lamento Boliviano

As you read my sad but exciting story, you can listen to this great song by Los Enanitos Verdes called "Lamento Boliviano." When I last posted, I was surprised to see how small our bus was for the first leg of the journey from La Paz to Cuzco. In any case, I just wanted to get to Cuzco, so this was going to be fine. There were only about ten people, and the bus had capacity for 25 or so. This lack of passengers quickly came to an end within an hour of the time of departure. We stopped at the outskirts of La Paz, waited for a while to find passengers (the driver or someone else will just yell the destination out hoping people will come), and picked up some more people. This included people with children, people with lots of baggage to sell, and two people with a goat. A GOAT! I couldn't believe my eyes. I was really hoping that it was a llama, but it was only a goat. It wasn't full sized; it was just a little baby goat, but a goat nonetheless. I stole a few pictures while the owners weren't looking. I apologize that the pictures are out of focus, but this is the best I could do.

The goat is inside that blanket.

There you can see its head on the right of the lady, who was one of the people who brought it on board.

The goat made some noises here and there, and they did their best to keep it quiet. It wasn't nearly as loud as some of the kids on board. As the trip went on, my headache got worse and worse. The sun was shining on my side of the bus, and so I had the window open a little. I usually get warm easily, especially in vehicles. But for other people, I think it was a little cold. Or noisy, because the guy in front of me reached back and slammed my window shut while he was trying to sleep. I was in shock. The roads aren't that great, the air is thin, I can't read in vehicles because it makes my head hurt, and I was steaming hot. Oh, and I really had to go to the bathroom. I was wrong to assume that this bus would have one. I don't mean to complain, but it was a rough little trip.

On our way to the border of Bolivia and Peru, we passed by Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake (12,500 feet). I was pretty excited about this because it was one thing I wanted to do in Bolivia but did not think I had time for. This lake is huge, and so I had plenty of time to see as much of it as I wanted. Really a beautiful lake; enough to make me forget about my throbbing headache! Here are some pictures.

After driving by the lake for a while, we started stopping in a little town on the edge of the lake. I thought it was just a break, and so I asked the bus driver how long we would be on break. He told me to go buy a boat ticket to get across the lake. I was really confused, but then figured out that the bus was going across the lake too, but in another boat. Another boat! The bus was going to cross the lake in a boat! The lake is too big to drive around. I couldn't believe all of these things that were happening. It was turning into a pretty eventful day. As you can see on this map, there is a small part of the lake where it is not too far to cross. It is between Copacabana and Huarina. I think it was there that we crossed, but I am not positive. This is a French map, which explains the weird looking spellings of Bolivia and Peru.


This is the boat that we were crossing in. It was only a minute or two, but we were packed into the little boat. If we hit another boat or something, we were all going to be taking the plunge into the cold Titicaca without life vests. But we made it across without a problem. Here is our mighty boat.


While we were doing this, our bus was crossing in a mighty barge of its own. It took a little longer to get over and off the boat, and for some reason we waited almost an hour in the bus to start driving again. This delay will come back to haunt me. I think that literature people would call what I just said "foreshadowing."

It was during this delay when the goat starting making noises. We started again for Copacabana, dropping people off here and there at little houses on the side of the road near the lake. I still hadn't found a bathroom, I still had a headache, I didn't have any Bolivian money because I was waiting to get to Peru to take out more. But all I had to do was wait a few more hours until things really got stressful in Copacabana. Here's our bus crossing Titicaca on a boat.