We arrived at the bus station at 6am and loaded up this massive double decker with tourists headed from Puno, Peru to La Paz, Bolivia. It was to be a 9 hour bus ride, complete with border crossing, which everyone kept telling us was a nightmare for American tourists. The bus ride wasn't bad, but the butterflies in anticipation for the immigration office were nerve wrecking. We had 3 different people on that bus alone give us advice about "how to handle it", not to mention the tour guides and travel company also tried to properly prep us. We had everything they could ever ask for: passports, color copy of our passports, itinerary in Spanish, hotel reservation numbers, flight information for leaving Bolivia, vaccination cards, clean (unbent, unripped) US Dollars for payment, and additional recent (so recent we had to take them the previous night in Puno) copies of passport photos.
When we arrived at the border our bus driver ran us (only us) to the departure office on the Peru side and after that ran us to the front of the line of immigration on the Bolivian side. We can safely say this is the first time we have ever literally run across a border before. He told them we were Americans, to which they semi reluctantly scoffed and opened up the visa window. The gentleman working this window was a man of few words, asking for "documentos", "fotos", "firma" and "$160" as he thumbed through our stacks of paperwork. When we handed him the $160 each for the visa cost (ridiculous, I know) he proceeded to count and inspect in slow motion each bill individually as if we were suspicious money counterfeiters. Our stomachs were in our throats as we heard nightmares about this part, rejecting money and making you go to the ATM, pay ridiculous fees, being taken into back rooms with one solo table and lightbulb for further questioning. And just like that he told us we could cut in line for our actual immigration stamp. What?! That was easy....
With a new (expensive) visa that is good for 10 years and pretty new country stamp in our passports we got back on the bus, relieved and totally stoked for the second half of our adventure.
Soon after the Bolivian border, we arrived in Copacabana, yes that Copacabana. We were supposed to have 1-2 hours here but because of whatever reason we had a whopping 15 minutes. We ate empanadas and got back on the bus. :-/
Then our bus arrived at the town of San Pedro y San Pablo, which is modernly famous for its unique ferry system. Here, you have the evacuate the bus, get on a little motorboat with 15 of your closest strangers and cross the river. Meanwhile, your big ass bus is being put on a ferry boat that was seemingly made of Popsicle sticks and old car tires. No joke, we saw one ferry operator shoveling water out of one of the ferries with a bucket. It was incredibly amusing and hilarious. We arrived long before our bus did and we watched it from the shoreline, fingers crossed it wouldn't sink. It didn't, and we got back on.
We finally arrived in La Paz- the highest capital in the world, but apparently our tour guide, Geraldo (aka Jerry), was stuck in Uyuni (12 hour bus ride away). Instead his wife came to meet us and was waiting outside of the bus door with a hand written sign with my name on it. You would have thought she just learned she was cured of cancer when she saw us. Apparently she had been at the bus station for 3 hours checking every bus for our arrival (it is true we switched buses in Copacabana and we were no longer on the original bus number or company that we told them). Apparently also, there was a public transit strike that day so she wanted to make sure we got a fair cab price to our hotel. She was very sweet and greeted us with hugs and kisses and checked us into or hotel room- which has 3 beds and a jacuzzi. Totally unnecessary, totally awesome.
We were exhausted but we needed to eat, so we went to an English pub and perhaps stayed a bit too long. We almost overslept our 4am alarm for our 430 departure to the airport for our flight to Uyuni to begin the Bolivian part of our adventure. But we made it and we were off on our 45 minute flight towards the middle of nowhere.
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