Last night we left on the night bus from Cusco to Puno, Peru. This afternoon we visited the floating islands of Titicaca. An incredibly strange and uncomfortable tour of the two islands was enough of Puno so we got back on the bus and headed to Bolivia. The landscape was absolutely beautiful as we drove past the coast of Lake Titicaca and hundreds of small farms.
I began to get a bit nervous as we neared the border because I had read about how difficult it is for US citizens to enter. I read and re-read the visa requirements a dozen times and continually counted the documents in my travel wallet. Once we got to the border our worries were confirmed and the four American people from the bus quickly bonded as we scrambled to obtain missing documents. On an old computer in the back of the immigration office, we tried to log into our gmail accounts to print itineraries and plane tickets. We went back and forth between the immigration office, searching for a new document each time. The guys in the office were no help at all when it came to questions and apparently the other 25 people on our bus were not happy with waiting. Our final list of requirements to enter the country from Peru ended up being this:
-passport
-copy of passport
-official health immunization record of yellow fever
-$160 USD (without rips tears of folds)
-hotel or hostel reservation
-airplane or bus ticket leaving the country
-5x5 passport photo with red background
-Peru immigration form
-bank statement or credit card
-emergency contact info
-written itinerary of your trip
-visa application form (which you are supposed to print out on your own)
Soooo... Long story short it is hard for us to get into Bolivia. My friend from the Netherlands simply handed her passport and immigration form over to get a stamp and she was done. Putting this into perspective though, the US makes it so incredibly hard for so many citizens of third world countries to enter. I have met so many people that have been waiting months and even years to get a visa. They have spent hours trying to apply and hundreds of dollars with each application. I may be complaining of my simple troubles with entering Bolivia but in reality, it was doable and I was granted access at the end of the day.
Back to the story though, while we were rushing to print and copy and find these things, our bus decided it would leave and not only that, but it would leave without telling us or giving us our backpacks. Once we realized it was actually pulling away we ran for a bit until it was pointless and tuned back to look at each other. Now what? we all thought simultaneously.
Eventually we were all approved and found a taxi to take us the rest of the way to town. Somewhere down the road I remembered reading something in my Lonely Planet book about making sure you get the necessary stamps and that you get all your documents back. I suddenly realized that I was missing my yellow health records paper so we turned the confused taxi driver around and went back to the immigration office once more. As we rode in the taxi towards town, we hypothesized about all the things and scenarios that must have happened to our packs. Well, there's no tags on our bags so anyone can grab them from the bus, or, no one knows that they are ours so they are going to stay on board until La Paz... We worried about all the things we probably lost and managed to laugh in between because we didn't really know what else to do.
Once we got to town we found a driver of a different bus who directed us to a bus station and then directed us to a hotel where our bags supposedly were. How relieved we were to see our correct backpacks sitting behind the counter at this foreign hotel on the beach of Lake Titicaca. It had been a crazy long day and relief had finally reached us.
Next, came the confusion with our hostel reservation and paying way more than we should have and walking up way too many stairs with our big packs. We threw our things into our beds and were so excited to take a hot shower in our nice, big, private, overpriced, room with a view. Once we read the sign about the water shortage and lack of hot water we shared a quick laugh then decided to go out to dinner.
Upon looking through my wallet I realized that amidst the confusion and stresss of applying for my visa, I had never received my credit card back. Even when I returned to the office for my immunization card and asked several times if there was anything else that belonged to me, the man behind the desk looked me straight in the eyes and said no. I felt disheartened to have been deceived and though this was not the first thing I've had stolen, it was one of the more important.
Thanks to last minute phone calls with my dad and the credit card agency, all has been taken care of.
Our day was rounded off with some cheap and disgusting pizza and many many laughs as we sarcastically joked about how "great" and how "perfect" everything went today.
Traveling just wouldn't be the same if it were all so easy and effortless. All in all, it's hard not to smile because we are in an absolutely beautiful place. We're 12,600 feet up on the bank on Lake Titicaca in Copacabana, Bolivia and things just couldn't get any better.
...or worse :)
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