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Our last night in Peru was spent having a nice dinner in the main plaza of Puno and a few drinks at the local bars.
An early morning followed, as we were crossing the border in to Bolivia. The bus ride followed the shores of Lake Titicaca, so there was no shortage of awesome things to see, and about 4 hours later we had reached the border. Honestly, I expected a large airport style border with loads of security and guns, but there was only a long line going into a run down old building and not a hell of alot more. Once we had our immigration cards stamped, they put us into another room to get the passport stamps and then we were to be on our way. It´s times like these that I am so happy to come from such a neutral country as NZ, as the two americans trying to get through were dragged over the coals, resulting in one of them almost being denied indefinitely from Bolivia. She ended up having to pay a $135 visa (BRIBE) just to get through. Corruption is rife here.
My first real taste of transport in Bolivia came in the form of a small boat that we had to get on to cross an inlet of Lake Titicaca. It honestly looked like it was falling apart, and even though the ride was only about 10 mintues, 4 people were totally seasick. They also had to transport the bus over (as it was taking us all the way to La Paz) on this small barge that also looked as unstable as Britney Spears. We stopped at a small town called Copacabana to have some lunch and then made our way to La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia, and the highest capital city in the world. We passed through El Alto - the outer suburb of La Paz, and I saw the first of many llama foetuses hanging up outside the shop window.
La Paz is a totally mental city, that´s the only way I can describe it. People are everywhere, and there is no order to anything. The stray dogs look as though they are running the show, and every power pole has at least 50 wires going in all directions - a result of local people stealing power off the main line. We took a quick walk around the city to orientate ourselves and were so excited to explore it further. It is so completely different to Peru and Ecuador it´s hard to believe this country is part of the same continent, but I absolutely LOVE this place.
We went out for dinner at an english pub called Oliver´s Travels, and then headed home for an early night, as tomorrow I will be mountain biking down the worlds most dangerous road!!
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