La Paz

YAY well we finally arrived 6pm last night and met Su and found our apartment. It feels like such luxury after Peru - La Paz is huge and more of a poorer Lima with snow capped mountains!

The journey was far from simple, comfortable and direct as we had been promised for our 65 sol each. We began fine till about 4am we hit a miners strike near Puno and had to get off. The "10 minute walk" was definitly a con - one and a half hours later we arrived on the outskirts of Puno. It was freezing in the watery sunlight, people milling around, small fires burning in the streets, rocks and trucks acting as the bloquade.

Halfway along the walk Tanya and I accepted a clever entrepreneur´s offer to carry our big bags in a wheelbarrow and he said this was the third day of the strike and it was chaos. We managed to lose the rest of our bus group apart from a girl from the Netherlands and another from Germany, so with them we caught a taxi to Puno´s buis terminal. After an hours wait there tourPERU found us all another slightly less luxurious bus and we coninued to Yunque.

Yunque was fine, we got off and used the loo, then carried on a bit to the immigration part. Major panic when I thought I had left my passport at the loo stop but turned out to just be inside my diary... But the troubles were not over there. We were leaving Peru and being stamped out when the guard pulled Tanya´s passport to the side and said there was a promblem... she had only been stamped in for 30 days to Peru and we had been there nearly three months! So she had ben illegal for about two of those, eek. Ofcourse this meant a fine... $63 Amercian Dollars, a lot. And there were no ATMs till La Paz, still about 6 hours away. With all our money (sols, dollars, anything) together we managed $58, and pleaded our case of charity work and first time travelling meant we managed with being 5 under, but now we literally had no money and the bus conductor told us it had been too long and they were leaving and we had to meet them at Copacabana, a 15/20 minute taxi ride. This would have been fine if we had had some money on us but we had NOTHING. So very, very much stuck in Yunque with no money and no bus, a few pieces of fruit, crackers and some cheese we´d bought for the trip.

Thank the holy stars, the bus in the end did wait, with a lot of running on our part as another man had some trouble and either he must have paid them to wait or they thought 3 was worth it. We made it on to the bus, sat down and breathed till the condutor said "have you been stamped into Bolivia?" sh*t no we had not and there was a big queue, so some more running in front of the entire bus who probably hated us for taking so long we legged it and joined the queue. I had to run back as we forgot our green forms we had done on the bus a few hours earlier so more nice glares, but finally we got our 30 days for Bolivia and were back on the bus, only to drive 20 minutes to Copacabana for an hour long lunch break. With no money we finished our fruit and crackers and cheese. The fruit included prickly pear cactus! We steered clear of the other bus passengers and were the first ones back for the last leg.

The bus had been changed to a rubbishy hot thing but the views now were stunning! Lake Titicaca is enormous and the snowcapped mountains of the Bolivian Andes were visible. We were legal and on our way again so fairly contented at this point, until we got to the port town of Tinqui where we had to pay 1.50 Bolivian dollars to cross Lake Titicaca. As I have already said, we had no money so another panic began. The bus got on a raft of wood surrounded by tyres and bobbed off to the other side. The passengers all lined up at the ticket booth. Tanya and I stood not quite sure what to do till we saw the German girl we shared the taxi with from Puno. Luckily she paid for us!

After this we both fell asleep and woke up in La Paz. The first thing we did was find an ATM and got our ears pierced with Su... Tomorrow we are off to the jungle, an 18 hour truck ride but we´ll be with Tim, Su, Toby and the Germans. Tonight one of Germans is turning 20 so it´s party in La Paz. We will do the touristy stuff when we get back or Su said we can go to work with her - she works with street boys with Arco Iris. Feel so glad to finally be here!

Hope everyone is okay! Still can´t believe neither of us saw Tanya´s visa number, it would have been SO easy to change it to a 9 from a 3 but hey we are alive so it´s all fine.

- Rach xxxxxxxxx