Punoooooo!

When last we spoke, I was on the shores of Lake Titicaca. I had just crossed in a little boat, while our boat had crossed the lake on a small ferry. We finally got back on the road after waiting on the other side of Titicaca for about an hour. Like I said before, I wasn't in the best of spirits. I had had a headache all day, I had no more Bolivian money, I was hungry, I had been needing to go to the bathroom for like 5 hours but our bus had no restroom, babies were crying, and the bus was really warm. We wound our way down the road surrounding Titicaca, stopping at certain small houses on the side of the road where some people on the bus lived. I think it was around here when the people carrying the goat got off, but I do not know for sure.

After a while, and after the sun had set, we made it to Copacabana. This is Bolivia's Copacabana, not Barry Manilow's or Rio de Janeiro's. But, because Rio's Copacabana is pretty amazing and I did see it this summer from the heights of Cristo Redentor and Pão de Açúcar (not to mention seeing it while walking on the beach), I'll throw in a picture.

Unlike the Copacabanas of Barry Manilow and Rio, Bolivia's Copacabana is not the hottest place around. Figuratively and literally. In the middle of the southern hemisphere's winter, at 12,600 feet, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, Copacabana was cold. Those of us continuing to Cuzco had to get off the bus and find the connection, but we had no idea where that was and the driver of the previous bus was no help. And we were at least an hour late.

A Colombian guy, a Bolivian guy, and I looked for the connecting bus. No luck. We made our way through the narrow streets that were packed with vendors, and eventually found the office of the bus company. The lady there told us that our bus had left already and that we would have to wait until the next day. They had been waiting for two people (the Bolivian and me apparently; the Colombian was going somewhere else but also had missed his bus), but the bust took two other people instead. We were pretty upset, as you can imagine, and told her to figure something out for us. She refused to help. There were no more buses to Cuzco, and so I was going to have to spend the night there in Copacabana and lose a day in Cuzco (I was only going to have a few days there to split between Cuzco and Macchu Pichu).

The Bolivian kid, Germán (great kid, by the way), called the bus company on a phone down the street while I stayed at the place and watched everyone's stuff. I always love how people ask me to watch their stuff. People do it at school all the time. How do they know I'm not wearing a disguise and am going to take their stuff? The bus company told him to tell her to give us our money back so that we could at least look for another bus, even though there appeared to be no other buses en route to Cuzco. She was gone for a while, came back, and then wouldn't believe him, so they went to find a phone and call. She finally agreed to give us back our money after talking to the company, but all of this took about an hour. Germán and I left the place and started frantically searching for a bus that was going to Cuzco.

We were told that the buses all left from a place up the street a few blocks, so we started to run. I had forty-five pounds on my back and this was at 12,600 feet. I think it's obvious that Germán and I had a hard time running to the bus. We ran about a block and then both stopped and replaced it with speed walking. We were hurrying though, and we found some buses that were going into Peru but not Cuzco. Arequipa would have been cool, but no way, wrong direction. Puno would be ok because at least it was in the right direction. We found a few buses that were going to Puno, but nothing to Cuzco. We figured that there was nothing to Cuzco that night, so we decided to go with the Puno bus.

Bus is probably a slight overstatement of what this vehicle was. It was a glorified VW van, with slightly more height and length and a few extra rows of seating. The seats were very close to each other, had no padding, and the road was . . . Andean? Bumpy is probably the best word. This was a family operation, meaning the dad drove while the wife and others sat up at the front taking money and looking for more passengers. It took us a while to get going because the bus was looking for more people (more business). One of the people at the front would hang out the door and yell "Punooooo!" This went on for 30 or 45 minutes, and then we finally got going on the four hour ride to Puno. It wasn't the best scenario, but it was at least a little closer to Cuzco.

It was hard to sleep because of the bumpy road, my headache, and my inability to find a bathroom. I did fall asleep though, as we crossed the checkpoint at the border. This was bad. It was only at the Bolivian side, which was not as bad because now I was out of the country and wouldn't have to explain why my passport didn't have an exit stamp. The worst part was missing customs at the Peruvian side, which was not caused by my being asleep. The bus was in a hurry and the driver kept saying that they only wanted Peruvians so that they wouldn't get held up at the border by any paperwork. My friend and I are not Peruvian, and when I told them that I needed to get out to get my paperwork done, they kept driving! They told me to do it in Puno or Cuzco. This was really bad. I was now an illegal visitor in Peru. More on that in the next post.

We made it to Puno at 10:30 pm or so. Germán and I had some good conversation and rested a little on the ride. We got out of the bus at one part of town, and had to walk a few minutes to get to the bus station. It was nice to have someone else with me while walking through the dark dirt roads of Puno late at night, and we had now regained a little bit of hope that we would make it to Cuzco by the morning. Now all we needed was a bus leaving from Puno.