Marcela was hugging and dancing with the indigenous ladies in their stockings and thick dresses the moment we crossed into Peru. Our last destination was the Floating Reed Islands of the Uros tribe in Puno, at the other end of Lake Titicaca. She had decided she would stay on this side and head to Cusco. My time in Bolivia felt incomplete and in an effort to return, I had the pleasure of fixing the fact that I had accidentally made myself an undocumented alien.

 

 

Getting There and Away

Our 6:30pm cama bus from Copacabana, Bolivia, to Puno, Peru was 3 hours and $7. Roundtrip boat rides constantly leave during daylight from the city port for the Floating Reed Islands, $1.45.

Connect to the rest of Peru. See Machu Picchu by going to Cusco, or reach Lima by going through Arequipa first.

To go to Bolivia, bus to La Paz and specify where you want to cross borders. Desaguadero is typically the fastest, $15 (usually 5 hours but I crossed on a bad day and it somehow took 12), and Copacabana was $9.

PASSPORTS MUST BE STAMPED TWICE AT EVERY BORDER. Once in an office exiting the country departing from, once more in an office entering the country arriving to. Having done this in Africa and throughout South America, this should have been obvious, but I guess it wasn’t. Oops.

Accommodation

From the bus terminal a $1 tuk-tuk brought us to Inka’s Rest Bed and Breakfast. We each paid $9 our double room with private bath, and struggled with wifi and hot showers. But breakfast was our main reason for picking this place: pancakes, sliced bananas, puffed cereals, yogurt, juice, jam, toast, eggs.

 

 

Our Time Together Comes To A Close

For two people who had never hung out one-on-one, the Marcela and I were a very excellent pair from the start. As the end went from sad to bad to worse, it wasn’t long before we were having serious withdrawals, regrets, and even tears.

Day 87

Things were pleasant as we started our final day at the cevecherias along Cahuide street. My favorite dish of the entire continent was $2 for a giant bowl. We picked up a slab of pineapple and got biked to the bus terminal, sitting on seat covers printed Che’s face.

I booked a bus ticket back to Bolivia and before we walked to the port.

The roof of the motor boat treated us to a fresh breeze and the welcome signs had us excited, but the feeling was brief and soon replaced with disgust at how artificial the modern Uros culture felt. The boat docked on to what were indeed yellow floating reeds, but instead of having the freedom to explore, we were restricted to the houses of the specific “community” we had arrived at. These small tribal communities were tightly packed and identical to each other. Anything extra, including sitting in the iconic reed boat as the community women sang songs that were in fact European rather than indigenous to Peru, meant more money. Money that M and I were not about to cough up.

The one free aspect was the introduction given by the president. He gave a historic speech in Spanish that I vaguely followed, going over the process of building the islands by hand, as well as some geographical facts, which was nice. A bitter Marcela questioned the local gender roles.

A woman invited us into her conical reed house. The interior was simply a bed, made of reeds of course, with sheets thrown on top. She kept asking pushing for us to buy her souvenirs, waving in our faces the same trinkets found across the continent but that she insisted they made themselves. She clearly hated us when we tried to ask her more interesting questions about her family and lifestyle an Uros member.

We climbed a ladder to a viewing platform; every community has one. We wanted to head back to Puno, but the boat wasn’t leaving yet. I was mildly worried we were stuck or would miss the return trip. Then realized there was no way these people would let us cheap bums hang around—they wanted us to be gone as much as we did.

We crossed the water in boat to El Capital where our passports were stamped for something like $.60.

 

 

Perhaps we were too harsh, but long-term backpacking taught us to appreciate the magic in experiences with nature and cultures of genuine value, leaving us with little patience for the tourism industry and the excessive amounts of cultural appropriation that accompany it. Relieved to be back in Puno, we followed the lakefront and walked to the end of the boardwalk, then looped back to Mercado Bellavista, a very mediocre market relative to the others we had encountered in those weeks. The fruit was waxed and mass-produced, not farm-fresh the way we were used to.

Along the way, we passed homemade cinemas, which were quiet cells each equipped with a flat screen TV where customers could enjoy a film of their choice from a giant selection of DVDs. Latino movie snacks were available for purchase.

We also found a big slide swarming with children.

A painful parting with Marcela was followed by a cold all-nighter spent blogging from a plastic stool.

 

Day 88

An immigration nightmare.

Gasping for sleep, I plowed until 5:30am . At 6:15 I was up again , ate a breakfast in a haze, got a taxi, my bus was late.

Getting to the border took long enough, but the real atrocity lay in the snaking lines at the immigration offices on both sides. We stood miserably in the sun, I was drooling at all the chicken soup and ceviche surrounding me.

Hours later a sour-faced pudgy man, really more asshole than immigration officer, told me I have no Peru entry stamp and that I was illegal. I remember being polite and extremely confused as he insisted there was no way in the world he could give me an exit stamp. I couldn’t explain myself until it slowly dawned on me that two days ago, in our stress and exhaustion, both Marcela and I had completely missed half the border crossing process.

We had hiked Isla del Sol all day and we were brain-fried. The bus driver had rapidly explained the border-crossing process, Marcela is fluent in Spanish, we thought we followed the rest of the passengers through it all, I asked her if we needed any more stamps, she said I don’t think so, and I was happy with that. And now I was paying for it.

I left, stressed, and squeezed past the seas of people hustling (and cholas being wheeled in bike taxis) across the border. I was following a Spanish couple from my bus and started sharing my issue. They helped me so much. The guy walked with me all the way back to the Peruvian office, explaining to the crappy officer in true Spanish. The moment he asked if I could pay something, the officer asked me to dish $50 in exact change. I had to dash to not one, but two little street stalls before anyone had enough to break my emergency Benjamin, praying it wouldn’t be counterfeit.

I threw over the money with gritted teeth, got back to Bolivia with plenty more time waiting in line and accepting the fact that he totally pocketed that cash, before a nicer lady merely glanced at my side-by-side entry and exit Peru stamps. I was back in Bolivia.

Whoo. I ate my stress away on fava chips with palta (avocado), a combo I highly recommend. The whole bus was vegetated from the abnormal wait times. I chatted with the rugby-playing English guy sitting next to me about the disastrous day.