Trouble at the border

Saturday May 3rd

We left LaPaz for Peru today. But first we were going to visit the ruins at Tiwanaku. This is Bolivia's most important archeological site. It wasn't that impressive though, but it did divert us for a couple of hours and break up the journey. Not that I would know because I slept from La Paz to there. I was a bit unwell for the first time. I don't think it was the altitude.

After that it was a short run to the border with Peru, but when we got there we found it closed. It took a while to figure out what happened, and we only found out after we were stamped out of Bolivia, but the Peruvian side was shut down because a border guard had been shot earlier that day.

So there we were stuck in no mans land, with no idea when we were going to get across, so what else could we do except find some beer and have a drink. We even managed to find a wedding party to have a drink with as well.

Then a couple of hours later a mini miracle happened. The border crossing opened for foot travellers only, not our truck, and our tour leader managed her second crisis in a few days quite well. She found and chartered a private bus for us and our luggage. It was then a fairly straight forward journey to Puno, our destination for the night, and more importantly we weren't going to miss out on our Lake Titicaca excursion. Well Colin, our truck driver, would, but I guess you can't have everything. At the end of the day people were grumling about South American border crossings, but something like that would have shut down a border crossing anywhere in the world.

Actually the day finished on quite a good note. Puno is quite a touristy town, as the gateway to the lake, and so we were able to find a really good restaurant, and then a pub giving free drinks to get us in. We ended up having a dance in the disco for that pub, before heading back to the hotel.