Crossing the Peru-Bolivia Border
Before I boarded the bus in Puno that would take me around Lake Titicaca across the Peru-Bolivia border, I had to write down my passport number and nationality on a form that the bus coordinator would use to make sure everyone had the appropriate documents they needed for the border-crossing (which I did...whew!). A guy next to me noticed that I was American, as was he, and told me that he heard we didn't actually need to pay for the visa. He advised me to not pay the $160, even if they insisted I had to. I said, "I'm pretty sure we do need to pay for the visa, but it would be great if you're right about that!" I was also thinking, "If they ask me to pay, I can't just say no and expect them to give me the visa anyway -- what is this guy's plan if they ask him to pay the $160?" I don't think he even brought the money just in case, because when we got to the border, he couldn't get his visa (turns out we DID have to pay for the visa) and the bus continued on to Copacabana without him.
The bus ride to Copacabana from Puno was about 4 hours total, and I ended up talking to the guy next to me pretty much the entire time (I mean, he talked to me too... I wasn't being obnoxious). His name is Shir, he's 24, and from Israel. He served in their military for five years (2 years beyond the mandatory 3 years of service for men), and is now traveling for at least nine months throughout South America. He has 3 months of travel behind him already, and does not think another 6 will be enough to see all the places he has in mind, so he's planning to work on a farm at some point to save money for another three months. He said it was easy to save money in the military, but still -- I've met a few people who are doing 6+ months-long international travel trips, and I don't understand how people ever have money for that without a fellowship from their graduate schools....
(I am the most spoiled.)
Copacabana
& La Isla del Sol
Everything here in Bolivia seems expensive at first, because the exchange rate is 7 bolivianos to 1 USD, but of course, when you remember to divide the bill by 7, it all ends up being ridiculously cheap.
One of the Copacabana hostels recommended by Lonely Planet was Hostal Sonia, $12 USD a night, and that's the one I booked for my two days there -- before I knew there were $3 hostels available elsewhere in Copacabana. I'm slowly learning that Lonely Planet is not a great resource if I'm looking for the most frugal options, and that it is unnecessary to book hostels in advance because there are always several with availability to choose from; the ones without websites for advance booking are likely to be less expensive anyhow.
At least my extravagant $12-a-night-splurge hostal had hot water and a great breakfast! Here are the views from my floor:
The primary activity in Copacabana seems to be hiking across La Isla Del Sol (Island of the Sun) in Lake Titicaca, which you can get to via a 2-hour boat ride. The Isla del Sol itself isn't much to look at (very rocky and desert-y), but I really appreciated the opportunity to hike for a few hours, and the views of the lake from the trail were beautiful. Shir booked us tickets the night before so we took the same boat over. When we got to the island, Myles (a young and very tall Englishman who was on the same Puno-to-Copacabana bus with us the day before) found us at the north end of the island, and the three of us did the entire 4-hour hike together.
One topic of conversation during the hike was the Middle East and its ongoing conflicts. The role of religion in those wars prompted Myles to declare that he thinks religion is "heinous" because of all the violence it causes. I responded with a statement that I didn't realize I truly believed until that moment, which is that I don't think religion causes violence; I think there are violent people in the world, and they'll use whatever excuse they can to justify their behavior. If there was no religion in the world, the violent people would still be here in the same quantities, operating with the same appetite for destruction -- they would just find some other cause to justify it (race, money, etc.) This isn't an entirely original thought; I heard the religious scholar Reza Aslan say the same thing when asked whether Islam is an inherently violent religion during an interview with Fox News. It sucks when people do shitty things in the name of God, because it gives God and religion a bad rep, but I actually think religions are mostly very lovely, interesting, and helpful when they are used as personal, internally-focused tools intended to cultivate inner peace, humility, gratitude, integrity, wisdom, strength of character, compassion, and all those other qualities that help people connect with/love each other better. Developing one's spirituality is an incredibly personal process, and I wish people didn't feel like they have to get other people to use their own beliefs and practices to reach these ends, because that's when religion gets problematic. That's how I see it at this point in my life, anyhow.
OH HEY LOOK -- completely non-controversial photos from the island hike!
Here's a video from the roof deck of the boat on the way back to shore from the Isla del Sol (Shir is the one next to the flag in the blue shirt):
Boat tickets to the island were 30 bolivianos (bs), and then it was another 30 bs for trail checkpoints (it was quite confusing, but it's kinda like certain parts of the trail across the island are owned by different people and you have to pay a toll to walk the north half, and another to walk the south half). But 60 bolivianos is still less than $10 USD, so that wasn't bad at all for a day trip!
On the boat ride back, Shir asked me what my goals were for my trip, what I hoped to get from my travels. Honestly, I really hadn't thought much about this since I finished my Bonderman application essay. I revisited the essay just now, and I'm happy to say I have been fulfilling many of the goals and pursuing the experiences that I wrote about when I submitted the application back in January. For example: I am pursuing Spanish fluency (and even if I'm not where I want to be fluency-wise when I leave Bolivia, I will keep at it -- there are so many more Spanish-speaking places to explore, not to mention Spanish-speakers in the States I want to be able to talk to!); I still want to learn more about Buddhism and Islam (I bought a book about Islam, No god but God, by that religious scholar I mentioned earlier, Reza Aslan, to read before Malaysia and Indonesia); and the ideas in this part of the essay are still important to me:
Travel provides an opportunity to step out of the socio-cultural-historical context in which one’s assumptions about themselves and the world have been molded and invites them to be challenged. For example, modern Americans have all kinds of assumptions about what makes us happy, depressed, anxious, or violent. I am hoping that, by exploring a wide range of global communities, I can better understand the levels of violence, depression, and anxiety that plague the world. I want to see, first hand, the extent to which people in foreign cultures are struggling with these issues, and what, if anything (e.g. a deeper connection to the natural world; an emphasis on community inter-reliance), seems to promote social and psychological peace most consistently.
However, in my response to Shir, I added a few travel goals/"things-I-hope-will-happen" that were not mentioned in my essay:
1) To become tougher, more resilient, and less high-maintenance
2) To experience and appreciate the world's natural beauty and resources
3) To become more present to my immediate physical surroundings, and less attached to/invested in/influenced by digital worlds
4) To be humbled by the grandness of the planet, the mind-boggling amount of other humans who are living infinitely diverse lives all over it, and by gratitude for the opportunity to be alive on Earth for any time at all
5) To strengthen my self-trust, intuition, and self-reliance
6) To practice living without specific "goals" or self-inflicted pressure to be "moving forward" (especially professionally and romantically)... not that this is bad, by any means (goal-oriented living can be incredibly satisfying), but I think it's important to also be able to just BE WITHOUT AGENDA sometimes.
I was not so eloquent in the moment with Shir, but I think I communicated the same general ideas...
When we got back to Copacabana beach around 5:00, Shir wanted to find somewhere to drink piña coladas, listen to the Barry Manilow song Copacabana, and watch the sunset, which I thought was a delightful plan. We found a place with a great happy hour -- 50 bs ($7 USD) for 2-for-one cocktails. However, they did not have piña coladas, and my estimate of when the sun would go down was about 90 minutes early. So, after we finished our zombies and nachos, we headed up the street to the ATM to refresh our funds for the rest of the evening and try the original plan again. Coincidentally, Myles, who we lost when he'd taken a different boat back from the island, was leaving his hostel right next to the ATM as soon as we got our money. Shir decided to look for a hostel for the night (the one he stayed in the night before was being managed by a 10-year-old who set curfew at 10:00pm, probably because he had to get up for school in the morning...), so I spent the rest of the evening hanging out with Myles. Myles, by the way, is a hoot. Looking back, I think the evidence was mounting up throughout the day that he might be gay, but the British accent throws off my gay-dar (which, honestly, has never been very powerful to begin with). It can be hard to tell sometimes if someone is gay or just super fun in a "YASSS KWEEN" sort of way, ya know?
Anyway, Myles and I caught another 2x1 happy hour at a deck overlooking the beach during sunset and talked about our mutual fascination with zit- and cyst-popping videos on YouTube. The most romantic.
When the sun went down, the temperature dropped pretty significantly, so we went back to my hostel so I could put on more layers, cover up my sunburned face with some makeup, and take 20 minutes to catch up on wifi-related things. Then, we headed out to listen to some live tango and blues music. The performer was amazing -- I just love this style of music, and he had a great voice. I only wish he'd had a stage with more appropriate ambiance... something without a motorcycle parked right next to it, perhaps.
After that, we ended up at a cute cafe for a glass of Bolivian wine from Tarija and played Egyptian Rat Screw and Rummy (not that it matters, but I won all but one game. NBD.) Between the day trip expenses for the Isla del Sol hike (boat & trail tolls), coffee and a sandwich for lunch, zombie cocktail and nachos with Shir, vodka-orange juice with Myles, a mojito and a salad, and a glass of wine, I spent just under $30 USD the entire day. Not too shabby. And I certainly won't drink like that again until my birthday on the 24th (Monday), so I think I can easily spend less than $20 a day on food and daily transport in Bolivia.
I should note that the dirt-cheap prices here are balanced out by a lack of certain luxuries. For example, as I've mentioned before, hot water is not a guarantee. Also, carrying a roll of toilet paper around in my daypack has proven absolutely essential -- toilet paper is most often absent from public bathroom stalls. Sometimes, the toilets do not have flush handles, so a large bucket of water is provided outside the individual stalls, with a plastic pail for scooping up a bucket of water to pour down the toilet so it flushes (example below).
Overall, I think two nights was perfect for Copacabana. There was more to do than just Isla del Sol, but I felt like I'd gotten enough of a feel for it. It was cute, but certainly not the vacation-beach-resort type place you might expect. If anyone ended up there because they had it confused with the Copacabana beach in Brazil, they would be sorely disappointed.
Competitive Traveling
It's been interesting to observe how a sense of "traveler competition" tries to influence how much time I should spend in a given place. For example, on one hand, it's tempting to try to see MORE cities and MORE countries, so that ultimately I will have been to/seen more places. It makes for a more impressive "places I've traveled" list. However, I'm aware of what a superficial reason "so I can add it to a list" is to want to go somewhere, and it just doesn't fit with my style of travel anyhow, which is pretty slow -- I like to take my time, plan one or two things for a day and leave the rest open for spontaneity and wandering. If I were to try to pack in more countries to this South America half of the trip (i.e. Ecuador, Chile, Argentina), I feel like my experience would end up being a frenzy of impulsive photo-taking so I could capture images of and "remember" places I had no time to appreciate while I was actually there, no time to get to experience them at a pace that allows its unique energy and identity to soak in.
So, I just tell myself I will prioritize travel throughout the rest of my life and I'll get to those other places someday. My plan is to put all comedy and music money into a special travel savings account; that should help motivate me to take those hobby-careers up a notch or two!
Getting to La Paz
The 4-hour bus from Copacabana to La Paz on Wednesday (which was a mere $3 USD) involved an unexpected lake-crossing. I'm not really sure which part of Lake Titicaca this was (looking at a map, it didn't seem we had to cross the lake at all in the route from Copacabana to La Paz), but about an hour into the bus ride, the driver took the bus onto one of these raft-boats and that's how they got the bus to the other side of the lake. Incredible. And incredibly weird. There must be a rule against bridges or something.
The view from...the bus (?!)
When the bus reached La Paz, I was supposed to be picked up by the father of my AirBNB host, Javier. (His father is a cab driver, so this was going to be super convenient.) However, the bus didn't stop at a big terminal where a person could wait for everyone to exit through one or two doors; it just dropped us off in the middle of a very chaotic intersection, AND I was about an hour later than I thought I was going to be, so I didn't even know if Javier's dad was still there waiting for me, AND there was absolutely no way I would be able to pick him out of a crowd (Javier sent me one photo of his dad, but it would have still been nearly impossible). I found a bathroom (first things first), then got an empanada for 1 boliviano, and looked around for an internet cafe so I could message Javier I was just going to take a "not-your-dad's" cab instead. The cab ride took about 30 minutes, during which I had a nice little convo with the cab driver (I've noticed that most of my best Spanish practice happens with cab drivers) and I realized the AirBNB I selected was not very centrally located. (Oh well - more opportunity for long walks, then, right?)
La Paz (so far)
World Tour of Brazilian Embassies, Part 3: I don't really want to bore you with details about my latest mishaps trying to get my Brazil visa in Bolivia, especially because it doesn't matter anymore: on Friday, I finally got all the necessary documents and payment submitted, and they said it will be ready by Tuesday afternoon! This means I can stay on schedule - no need to extend my stay in La Paz past Wednesday :)
I just can't get over how cheap food is here. On Thursday, I had lunch at a restaurant just a few doors down from the AirBNB. It was a set menu that included a delicious peach-cinnamon-cider beverage called "mocochinchi" (recipe here for anyone interested in trying it at home), bread, a salad bar (and because I mistook salsa for a red salad dressing my salad was very spicy), noodle soup, Peruvian-style chicken (shredded chicken, potatoes, and peas in a curry sauce with a side of rice), and lemon merengue pie for.... *DRUMROLL*....(any guesses??).....
...under $4 USD. That's craziness.
Hanging with Shir: Shir is the first person who I have met traveling who is actually on a similar enough travel circuit that we have been able to meet up in more than one city (Copacabana and now La Paz). He has been trying to get signed up for multi-day hikes soon, so we only have a few days of La Paz overlap to hang. We tried on Thursday night, but it was pouring down rain and cold, and when I tried to get a cab and five passed by me without stopping, I only lasted about 3 minutes before deciding I preferred to stay home and be lazy in bed that night. We were able to get together Friday night, though, which was fun. There were surprisingly few places open, so we ended up getting wine at a Hard Rock Cafe, of all places. We got along great (he seemed much more warm and open/talkative than he was back in Copacabana).
I was telling him about a book I'd read a long time ago, Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, which is about how people can be pretty awful at knowing what will make them happy. The author talked about a study where people were texted throughout the day, asked what they were doing, and how happy they were. Results indicated that people were most happy while drinking or having sex (can't say I'm entirely surprised by this), and least happy when engaged in day-to-day care-taking roles. Shir immediately brought up the point that the happiness being measured must have been on the more superficial/pleasure-based end of the "types of happiness" scale, because sure, we may not be having a ton of "fun" per se when we're disciplining kids or changing diapers or helping a loved one eat who can no longer feed him or herself, but that doesn't mean these things do not contribute to a deeper sense of happiness -- something more like joy, peace, and contentedness. Then we got to talking about a book about parenting I'd read, All Joy and No Fun, and he said something I thought was really sweet: "I just imagine sitting with my wife, and we've just found out that our kid has made a really good, kind choice about something, and we cheers to all the hard work we put into raising our child so far, knowing that those moments -- the moments you realize that you did all you could to put a good-hearted human in the world and it's actually happening -- make it all worth it."
I still don't know whether I'll ever have babies (first I need to see what being in a no-breakups relationship for over a year is like, which will get me one step closer to knowing if making a life-long commitment to a husband/co-parent is what I want in my heart of hearts), but I sure respect the hell out of all the parents out there who are putting in the hard work of creating environments and instilling values that help kids stay/become the awesome people the world needs. Cheers to all of you!!
Exploring La Paz: Now that my Brazil visa is basically squared away (fingers crossed they don't deny it for some reason), I get to focus on enjoying what La Paz has to offer. There actually isn't anything I'm super pumped to see or do during my remaining time in La Paz, except for a bike ride down "The World's Most Dangerous Road" (which I have heard great things about from people who have done it and insist it is quite safe as long as you aren't reckless or high on drugs or something). I will meet up with Shir tonight to celebrate my birthday a couple nights early so I can do so with a friend. Sunday-Monday-Tuesday I will spend time reading in cafes, going for rides in the city's massive cable-car system, walking around parks, and people-watching as I wander around new neighborhoods.
Wednesday I will bike The World's Most Dangerous (but actually quite relatively safe, please do not worry) Road, and then bus to Rurrenabaque, where I shall pursue a tour of the Amazon Pampas for less than $100 USD, if possible.
Just a couple more days as a 30-year-old... what a mind-blowing year it has been.