23/08/2019 – Travel day, Puno, Peru, to Isla del Sol, Bolivia

We woke up early to start our journey across the Peru/Bolivian border. I started the day with a bad tummy, which didn’t give me confidence for the journey ahead. The last thing I wanted to do after needing to be close to a toilet for the last few days was sit on a bus for numerous hours. However, we had maxed out our time in Peru, and had to do the border today or I don’t know what would have happened! I gulped some more loperamide down, and put the huge sanitary towel that mum had packed me off with for this exact scenario (I think she had learnt from her previous experience in Peru) in my knickers to act as a nappy for any poo accidents. We got a taxi to the bus station. Josh had to carry almost everything as I shuffled, bent over double, alongside. We found our bus and got into our seats, which we had booked right next to the toilet (usually the seats we would avoid in a normal situation!) The seats reclined and I curled up and crossed my fingers that I would fall asleep to at least pass sometime of the journey. A few hours in the bus had pulled up on the side of the road and everyone was kicked off the bus. Not really sure what was happening we had a little scout around, and realised we were at a money exchange come café, in a little hut. We changed up most, but not all of our Peruvian money. We got back on the bus again and drove another half hour or so until we were in a bit of a traffic jam. This was where the bus attendant kicked us all out of the bus again and told us to have passports, and pointed over the road. We muddled through the vehicles and past all the street vendors selling all sorts of things, and found a tiny little hut. There was a very small queue, and we quickly had out exit stamps from Peru. As we wandered out of the hut unsure of what to do next our bus attendant appeared again and pointed us in the right direction so as to get out entrance to Bolivia stamps. We walked under a big arch and past many more street vendors until a local pointed and said migration to us. Again we queued for a very short time, entered the tiny little hut with three little booths set up, and got our entrance to Bolivia stamps. Josh was upset because his stamp wasn’t in the right place or something, but I was just pleased I hadn’t yet had an accident! We spotted our bus and before long everyone was back on and we were on our way. It wasn’t long before we arrived in Copacabana. We found the main street, spotted the iconic big white anchor on the lake front (where all the ferries depart from) and found a café with wifi to sit with our bags, and Josh had some brunch. I was still curled up in a ball, so Josh went and found a little travel agent that sold him a couple of ferry tickets, and then an ATM to get some Bolivian currency. One ATM wasn’t working and the other would only let him withdraw the equivalent of £60, which he did. It will be a challenge though as our next destination has no ATMs and no card machines! I got a bit confused when I looked at my watch and it said a different time to my phone, and then realised the time had gone forward an hour when we crossed into Bolivia! We suddenly had 15 minutes until our ferry departed! Luckily Latino time was on our side, and we managed to bumble down the road to the big white anchor in time. We got squished amongst the other passengers into a small and claustrophobic boat, even still I managed to curl up and fall asleep. It took about 1.5 hours until we were ashore of the Isla del Sol. It looked beautiful! As we stepped off the boat onto the pontoon we were charged the 10 Bolivian Sol each to enter the community. We paused and looked up the mountain, wandering how far up we were going to have to go with all of our bags. We were so out of breath so quickly, but then again lake Titicaca is 3800m above sea level so everything makes one breathless here! I was just carrying the hand luggage bags, and had to have a sit down a little way up, absolutely exhausted. Josh soldiered on, found our place and came back down to carry the bags (and me basically) up the rest of the way. We were shown into our beautiful en suite room, with a view down onto the lake, the boats, and a big traditional woven reed boat. I got into bed immediately and Josh sat and chilled for a few hours. We took our time heading slightly up the mountain once it was dark to find Josh some food. He had chicken and chips in a restaurant that was more like someones front room, there were only 2 other customers there, and the people who cooked Joshs food sat down opposite us with their dinner after serving Josh. We bought some crackers from their little girl who was running the small shop (a table with a small selection of biscuits, chocolate and drinks) distracting her from her game of Barbie for a few minutes! We walked back home in the dark, down the steep rocky mountain Inca path. When we got in I had some marmite on crackers, first bit of food in a while! We got tucked into our silk liners (for the added warmth) and fell asleep to some Friend’s on the Ipad.