Hasta Luego Peru... Hello Bolivia!

So we made it across the border with a four hour bus ride and a million stamps in our passports. Thankfully the VISA process wasn´t as scary as we thought! Except we had a little snag on the Peruvian side with Aly´s exiting stamp and Jo almost had to say goodbye... Just kidding we would never do that to eachother. Unless there was a queso empanada on the other side! Side note today the object of our desire was a queso empanada and we could not find one anywhere, luckily we live on cake corner and had a variety of sweets to wet our palate. Okay so we made it! We are in Bolivia. Booya!

We are happy to be in Bolivia but sad to leave our new friend Ambra! Ambra was our third musketeer in flirting our way into more morning pancakes and possibly the Puno Bothy Hostel Website! We hope we will get to meet up with Ambra in Argentina, She was our voice of reason!

Our first two days in Bolivia were spent in a little Coastal town called "Copacabana" it is the hottest spot South of Havanna! But really it was pretty hopping. We happened to be there during one of the biggest festivals of the year. We have some awesome pictures of little old ladies in traditional gard getting hammered at 10am. It is a blessing festival where you can get anything blessed for the year including your car/bus... which luckily the one we rode in today was blessed! We considered getting blessed ourselves since blessing consists of getting showered in Champagne and flower petals (Just kidding Mama Leavitt, Mama Vance wish you were there to partake!). P.S. you can buy three cupa libras for three dollars!

So the first night we ran into some of our friends from our Lake Titicaca Island expedition! They are the greatest little Indie Family from Argentina. We had very little money because there is no ATM in Copacabana...  we will talk more about this later! They helped us find the KFC of Bolivia and we had a good old fried chicken dinner for about two dollars. We had our very own emergency chicken... sorry Dot we ate this emergency chicken and it was delicious ( but no Roscoes!). We are hopefully going to meet up with them in Buenos Aires... they were lifesavers. All the people we have met from South America have been so awesome.

As the night continued we came upon a group of musicians, we´ll just call them the Bolivian Backstreet Boys. They had colonial looking outfits with mowhawks... we may become their new groupies and follow them across the country with shiorts of their faces and signs saying "America Loves You"! but seriously they were pretty fun to watch and the other people in the crowd were jamming. We danced with some Bolivianos who offered us a drink from their bottle...Drinking was a huge part of this festival. We continued on to another stage with an instrumental band and jammed with some more locals in traditional clothing. We are totally famous with the older men of South America!

The next day we decided to walk around as we waited for the ATM/Bank to open... it opened at 2:30pm. So there we were with no money looking at all the delicious food, and beautiful but cheap craft work being sold on the street. We were a little scared that we weren´t going to make it until 2:30 and started to scope out which street dog would be the best to eat. To pass the time we walked down to Lake Titicaca (hehe) and realized that the shore was covered with Bird boats and shards of glass of course we took multiple pictures. P.S. someone almost hit us with a glass bottle as they threw it from a taxi to the shore! As we began our climb back to the city we not only realized we were at even higher elevation, but that the street dogs were starting to look pretty good!

Luckily we made it to the bank along with about a hundred other backpackers! We felt a little better about our situation, knowing that we weren´t alone in our unplanned hunger strike. As we got closer to the bank doors there was a young guys policing the situation, there are so many cops in Bolivia! He didn´t let us stick together at first... Jo was left outside with some smelly backpackers as Aly was stranded without a translator in the Bank. We finally got our money and felt like Ballers because 7 Bolivians equals one American Dollar! Woot Woot we had money in our pockets and we celebrated by finally partaking in some delicious trout!

As we sat in the Restaurant eating our $3 Trout we noticed a little Boliviano torturing white female tourists with water balloons! He stood on his balcony found his target and then bam they were wet and he was nowhere to be found. Needless to say he was our favorite entertainment of the night!

The rest of the night was spent in our Hostel  due to heavy rain, hail and lightning. We might have watched some Simpsons and Friends  we are not going to lie. Who knew the summer in South America was also the rainy season? Not us!

Today we got into La Paz after a scetchy bus ride which started with hitting a pedestrian with a loose rock (or street brick) and a stop at the Policias to document the incident. But from the sounds of it in our Hostel right now it sounds like Luck has been on our side. A girl just told us her bus tipped today... Hello crazy! We did however today made an unexpected stop were we herded like cattle onto a little boat to cross a pass on Lake Titicaca where the bus took its own boat over! It was kinda crazy seeing our bus floating next to us on the lake.

So we are now happy, feed and safely in our Hostel in La Paz. Tomorrow we are going to Rurrenbaque, which is a jungle! We are super excited to see pink Dolphins, monkeys and other wildlife... we are not as excited to start taking Malaria pills. Okay well we will try and write again in about five days after we are out of the Amazon! Till then Adventure is Out There!

LOVE YOU,
Aly and Jo