Surprisingly the bus driver arrives on time and having had our last brekkie in Bolivia we leave La Paz for Copacabana. It is a very nice journey and we´re glad we´ve done it during the day. We read and have heard from fellow travellers that Copacabana is very touristy and so that’s why we have no plans in actually stopping there. On arrival it seems quite pleasant albeit true to form, a bit like Ambleside but for backpackers’ maybe. Lunch is reasonable; we find a Wi-Fi place with a “menu del dia”, so we´re quite happy. It allows us to do a bit of research on hostel options in Puno. We have contacted one already but they only have twin rooms, now we´ve found another and they reckon they have a double, so result!
After lunch we still have 30 minutes or so and wandering around the town we bump into Nadine, a Swiss girl from our Sucre hike, where we met Phil and Paul. We chat for a bit before heading back for the bus. She plans to hit Peru tomorrow, so maybe we´ll see her again.
When we booked the bus, we were told we couldn´t go via the other route, as the border was closed, in fact one bus company wasn´t running any buses to Peru at all even though it blatantly advertised that it did. It was all to become clearer much later… Our border crossing was ok; we even managed to change some Bolivian money without being ripped off too much.
What was disappointing though was the hostel. It was very clean, very friendly, but a triple room!!!! Nowhere even close to a double! We guess they figure most people would arrive be disappointed but put up with it. But, you guessed it, we had no intention of – it’s the principle you understand. Luckily for us there was Wi-Fi and we heard from Géonolé and Aurora who had arrived in town yesterday. They were in a hostel that did have double rooms available and it was much cheaper into the bargain, so we join them.
Maybe it was what happened with the camera yesterday; maybe we were still tired from the hike; maybe the business over the room, who knows but the town of Puno just wasn´t doing it for us. We had planned initially to stay for 2 or 3 days, see the floating islands, see the boat “Yavari” that was built on the Clyde and transported from the Panama canal in pieces by mules to be put back together again on the highest lake in the world…but instead we just wanted to leave, move on, get to Cusco and hope it felt better. We were fed up with arriving in towns that were half built. They build with giant breeze block like bricks but can´t be arsed rendering them, so it´s naked ugly red brick with cement oozing out everywhere…. Maybe we´re just done travelling!
Pondering this thought we try to stay upbeat for the evening, we are celebrating Aurora´s birthday after all. The evening is good fun, with Aurora trying to learn English, pity help her learning from us and we have a really nice meal where we´re able to try alpaca steak at last.
Researching our next move on the internet before going out we realise there is a day bus to Cusco in the morning and decide to leave it in the lap of the gods, if we´re up we´ll go.