Copacabana, meeting Bolivia and the people who enter it.

As said, I remet the Brazilians at the busstop in Cusco. Bus-cama to Puno, then further to and is definately of the crazy kind in a good sense. We meet later in Puno, waiting for the bus to Copacabana. The brazilians and I get along find and exchange some music and e-mail addresses. After the 6 hour busride to Puno, it is 5 in the morning and, though we are tired, we are in high spirits and about to visit the highest salt lake in the world: lake Titicaca. After an improvised breakfast at the station we say goodbye and I place myself near the people that are going to Copacabana as well. There I meet Dave and some British girls. Later in the bus I make contact with Diego, a guy from Colombia and Ailin, an Argentinian girl that works with cruiseships in the island of fire. Coincidence? We exchange data.

We all cross the border and there we go separate ways. Dave and I decide to have lunch first, before he needs a nurse in the hospital to clean out his wounds (he fell with a mountainbike and showed us a video how a nurse sprayes water in his arm from one hole and it comes out from another.) There we meet 2 norwegians and a swiss fellow who offer to help me with any questions related to Tromso, northern Norway. They seem very nice chaps. When I go for a visit to the restroom and come back, they have made their run for the bus already. Two other Norwegians sit at the table next to us and we start talking. They are photoshooting the school life of Bolivia. They offer us their room for luggage storage and we deice to take a walk together. Dave and I go up the mountain, next to the lake up towards the graveyard to get some good pictures. He gives me his camera and takes the most funny positions including ones without any pants on, where I climb up rocks next to great opportunities to kill oneself jumping down.

Time's up and we order a quick pizza, get it on take-away, say our goodbye's to the kind Norwegians and the two Dutch girls we met and then devour the pizza in the bus on our way to La Paz. In the middle of the road, we were sleeping, we get waken up by people shouting: get out get out! take the boat take the boat! WHAT?!? What do you mean boat? This is a bus.. right?
A soldier in camouflage outfit with a gun tells us to get out. Ok, so this is serious. Once we get out we realise that the entire bus will be transported on a launch (small vessel) and can not cross with people on board. So we have to buy a ticket for another boat that transports us to the other side of the lake. It looks alot like a refugee boat. A man on board gets nervous of us taking pictures with flash and tells us things I can't repeat. When I ask him what he was saying, his female family member next to me assures me it was something about the weather and that he is just nervous. Whatever. I won't let his foul or nervous mood waste my good spirits. Not today, I've let people do that too much in the past. Didn't bring me any good back then, so fuck him. We arrive at the other side and while Dave gets a sausage from the street corner, a woman asks me whether I am Argentinian or not. ( I get that alot, peole asume sometimes I am from Chile or Argentina because of the way I look and some parts of my accent. Then again they also believe I am the lead singer of the maroon 5. As if!) The woman is Bolivian but lived in the Netherlands and speaks a few words in Dutch to me. What are the odds? When we finally arrive in La Paz we get dropped off in a ghetto like area. We manage to get a proper taxi (with phone numer on the side) and get dropped off at Loki Hostel. The hostel seems to be located in Brisbane, Australia or New Sealand or whereever where they speak English. I drink two beers with Dave and his friend before calling it a night. The next morning early, I call Cecy, ambassador of the Couchsurfing community in La Paz. I find a cab with the right number 7.. waiting in front of the hostel that takes me to her house. A Brazilian Couchsurfer is just leaving. The house is gorgeous. I´m not surfing any couch, I have my own room with an incredible view over the mountains. The universe can treat us travelers with great compassion and marvel.