Today is a Bus Day.
We are up early in order to catch a bus to Arequipa, as we
begin the journey back to Lima and ultimately to get back to Australia. First things first though, we need to get to
the bus station. I’d been trying to book
a bus ticket through various agents in La Paz, however it isn’t that simple to
get a bus from La Paz to Arequipa in one hit.
We have two basic options. One is
the “nice” option, to backtrack to Copacabana and ultimately to Puno in order
to get the bus to Arequipa, however that takes a lot longer than the second
option, which is to go to Puno via Desaguadero.
The bus from Puno to Arequipa leaves at a very defined time and we
simply cannot get to Puno if we go via Copacabana! So, Desaguadero it is.
We take a taxi to the main La Paz bus station and come up against
the first problem of the day. It seems
all buses go to Puno via Copacabana.
None will arrive before our bus from Puno leaves to Arequipa. Bugger.
We scramble to what is described as the regional transport
“hub” in order to catch a mini-van to Desaguadero. “Hub” is a loose description. It’s a certain street, with a couple of
mini-vans on the corner, and touts yelling out the destination. We find one going to Desaguadero, accept the
ticket price and pile in to wait.
Because of my long legs, I get to sit up front with the driver. Of course, we won’t be leaving until the van
is full, however long that is. People
straggle in and eventually we are only two people short of being able to leave. To get underway, I offer to buy the last
remaining seats. It’s still a cheap
trip. As it happens, just as we are
about to go, one more passenger arrives, so I only have to cough up for 4
seats, not five. Eighty BOB’s for 3.5
hour trip for the 3 of us – about A$15.
It works out well, as the spare seat is between me and the driver in the
front of the van. I’m quite comfortable
– not so sure about those in the back.
The trip to Desaguadero is uneventful. We drive past the ruins at Tiwanaku and in
fact drop off two passengers at the turn-off to the ruins. As expected, the ruite is not especially
scenic, but certainly not “un-scenic”.
There was sporadic rain falling in the distance, Lake Titicaca
(including the occasional sail boat), farming lands, and basic rural life at
high altitude in the Andes. Still interesting.
On arrival into Desaguadero, we are mobbed on arrival by
kids with bike taxis who want to transport us to the immigration facility at
the border. Andrea negotiates a price
which is for three kids to help us out, but it is completely chaotic and we
almost end up with four people. I
foresee one of our bags disappearing down a side street… It takes some strong words and unfortunately
one of the kids is left downcast. Finally
we’re underway, only to realise that the trip is really quite short. We are unloaded from the bikes, and of course
the little blighters try to extort more from us but we stick firm-ish. They get an extra BOB each. It won’t sink our ship!
We join the surprisingly long queue of people waiting to
cross the border and wait and wait and wait.
About 1¾ hours all up. When we
actually see what the process is, it is impossible to see how it has taken so
long. Ours are done inside 30 seconds.
One Australian girl (of course) in front of us has managed
to hold up the show for a while due to not having an entry stamp into
Bolivia. She’ll be fined. Andrea gets asked to help her understand what
is going on and the process she will have to follow. The girl seems quite OK with it. I’m quite grumpy – for the life of me I can’t
see how you could make it into a country without an entry stamp. It has now delayed us significantly!
Eventually done, we head to the Peru side, where we join
another long queue. “Only” one hour
twenty minutes this time. The queue is
going quite slowly, so I take the opportunity to leave the queue for a while to
print some bus tickets. This of course
takes a far longer than it should, as the first idiots can’t read my thumb
drive. After a lot of fluffing around, I
tell them not to bother and I head to a second shop, who seem to be able to get
it happening, but work as slowly as possible.
Eventually, with tickets in hand, I return to the line to find it has
advanced rapidly and Andrea is waiting for me at the doorway. Angry. As usual.
We race outside and negotiate the price for a taxi to
Puno. We’ll be cutting it finer than I’d
like, but should be OK. The taxi driver
seems excited to have a ‘rush’ job and drives accordingly. Maniac.
Never tell South American taxi drivers you’re in a hurry…
We arrive into Puno with 45 minutes to spare. Time for a quick visit to the toilet and to
grab a bite to eat, then pile on to the Arequipa bus. We settle in, breathe a sigh of relief at
having arrived, and then settle in to watch some movies. The time passes surprisingly quickly and then
we’ve arrived in Arequipa. We find a
taxi, who proceeds to tell Andrea that the area of the hotel I’ve tried to book
is in a very dodgy area – as every single one of them will do. It’s a bit of a scam to try and re-direct you
to a hotel whereby they might get a commission.
Regardless, the hostal I’ve chosen (without having time to make a
reservation) has a set of stairs at the front and Andrea thinks it looks dodgy. The driver says he will find us a nicer
place, which turns out to be not too far from the original choice, although we
have driven in circles for a while to get there.
The new hostal is nice enough and across the road from a
police station. Shouldn’t be too much
yahooing during the night. It’s old,
with thick walls. We settle in.
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