Before heading over to another country, I quickly glanced at the visa requirements, and read in one place is was going to cost me, and in another place it wasn't. The guy selling us bus tickets said it would be no problem, but sure enough we got to the border and I had to do a visa application and pay $135 to get into the country as a reciprocal fee just for US citizens! They wouldn't even accept credit cards and since everything around this area is so cheap I didn't have that much on me, so I had to borrow money from all my travel buddies to get across the border.
Once we finally arrived, it definitely was nicer than Puno, a quaint little town that's mostly just a take off point for the Isla de Sol, a 2 hour ferry ride away. We found a great hotel for only 50 bolivianos (exchange rate is around 7:1 so that's around $7...nice) with a lake view and everything. We were on the 6th floor with no elevator though, and when you're already at 3800m that takes quite a lot out of you. We were all gasping for air by the time we got to our rooms haha.
We headed out early next morning to the Isla de Sol, after running out of the hotel since he thought we hadn't paid (but we definitely did immediately when we checked in). It was foggy, rainy, and cold on the ferry, which I was worried I wouldn't get on since that dock seemed like it would fall apart at any moment. It was just a big area with 2 motor boat engines on the back and some benches and fences on the roof. We were first inside, but as soon as the engines started, thick foggy exhaust started to fill the inside, which only had 2 small windows at the front that definitely weren't going to vent the place well. We quickly decided to climb up to the roof by a tiny ladder on the outside of the boat, quite dangerous looking haha.
Freakin cold on the ferry some parts.
We got to the island and immediately started looking for some accommodations. There are tons of locals around asking you if you need habitaziones. First you ask them if they have aguas calientes (hot water), desayuno (breakfast, since most places include it...it's usually only stale bread, butter, jam, coffee, and tea), and wifi (which they usually don't have, and definitely not on this little island). Well they had the first one, but the whole place looked like a disaster area we weren't expecting much. They led us a few minutes away from the main area, up some rocky path, and finally to our rooms. We just decided to do it, even though it was simply a room with beds, lacking shades and a heater hah.
We took our daypacks and trekked back into town to get some food. The lunch special wasn't going to start for half an hour so we had some hot drinks and some burgers from a stand, which were pretty tasty but didn't fill me up at all. We decided we'd go over to the south part of the island to get more food. We knew it was far, but little did we know we wouldn't get there for over 4 hours...
After adding another traveller to our group of now 5, walking over the rolling hills with great views, paying more and more tolls for their little path which we were initially told would only cost 10 Bolivianos but ended up totalling 20 Bolivianos, we finally arrived at the south part of the island at around 5pm.
Sunset was at 7:15, we were about 2 hours from our hostel, and we still had to eat. I was starving, since I was completely unprepared for the journey we embarked on. We actually found a decent place to eat with a fantastic view and a really nice lady running everything, a rare occurence since we'd had many unfriendly servers. Delicious food finished and a setting sun meant we had to get going.
Fortunately we had a near full moon during the evening, so when it finally got dark it was still bright enough to make our way along the rocky uneven path without flashlights. Risky? Yes. Adventurous? Yes. We stopped a few times to get some nice night shots of the landscape too.
After we finally got back to the northside, we were hanging out when at about 10:45pm the lights in our hostel went out. Flashlights quickly fixed the problem, but when I went outside a few minutes later and looked towards the town (one thing that was nice about our hostel was the view), I realized that there were absolutely no lights whatsoever on the island. I thought it might be a daily power shutdown to the small island, but I thought that was a bit early for a complete power shutdown. Took a few more night pics of the scene.
We didn't worry about it too much, and just went to sleep in our spider infested rooms, but the next morning the problem consisted. You couldn't really tell in the day since everything had tons of natural light available and they used gas to heat up food and whatnot, but it was still weird knowing there was no power to the town.
We took a ferry back into town and needed money first and foremost, since there was no atm on the island and we were running short on cash. We even needed money to catch a bus to La Paz, but when we got to the atm it was completely off. A little confused we went to the next one to also find that off...and then it all came together. Copacabana had no power either! Fortunately we had another traveller spot us some bus tickets so we could get to La Paz. Hopefully there's power there so we can finally pay people back!
The bus to La Paz...Jesus had our back.
We had to cross a part of the small lake and pay an extra fee to ferry over ourselves in another boat...probably because those bus ferries couldn't carry all the weight...
Power in La Paz!
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