The stunning 6,500 meter peaks of the Cordillera Real.
Puno – La Paz (Bolivia). 328 kms.
Total Distance So Far: 13,213 kms
At 8am we arrived at a little office in the backstreets of Puno. The man knew all about us and greeted us warmly. He asked for the said documents and passport. Things were going to smoothly. “where is the yellow fever certificate?” he asked. We said we do not have one. He said it is necessary and could not issue the visa without it. He said we must find a clinic and get the jab. For the next three hours we tried to find a yellow fever centre in Puno, a ramshackle chaotic town of 130,000 people, donkeys and congested streets. Eventually a helpful doctor in one clinic told us where to get the jab. The hospital we next arrived at was not a very pretty place. We were escorted to the inoculations department but the nurse there said they had no yellow fever supplies left until the following week at the earliest. We told here how important it was, but she said there was nothing she could do. Our last resort was to offer cash for a stamped up book. She said no. We insisted and threw some money on the table - pleading. Eventually she filled out a booklet, confirming the non-existent jabs had been done. We thanked her and zoomed back to the consul. Twenty minutes later we had the visa, and were on our way to the Bolivian border 100 kms further south.
It was a lovely drive along the western shores of Lake Titicaca, although the road was perhaps the worst pot-holed, uneven piece of ageing asphalt I have ever ridden on. Teeth-rattling stuff. We could also not find any more of the low-octane (90) leaded petrol. The only fuel on offer was 84 octane. I made a call to Mariano and asked if we could feed this stuff into the trusty Transalp. He said ‘it should be OK, but the bike will get pretty noisey”. He was right, we lost some more power (we were already at 4,000 meters), and it made the Transalp sound like a tank. I don’t know of any other bike though designed for 95-98 octane unleaded fuel, that will run with 84 octane leaded. Very comforting to know when you are in a fix.
The border itself was a chaotic mess of touts trying to sell everything from second hand shoes, to fruit to ponchos. There were plenty of unofficial ‘helpers’ trying to muscle their way in to guide you through the process of which building to get this stamped, and what hut to fill in another useless form. In the end Lidy stayed with the bike to guard it and I did the running around. I even went to immigration to check her out and gave the officer, who had duel jobs – one to stamp passports and the other to watch football – both of our passports. He asked me where the other traveler was. I said guarding the bike outside. He showed me Lidy’s photo page and asked if this was her. I said yes and he stamped it!
The Bolivian side seemed more orderly, and being controlled by 8-10 policemen, all in knee-high black lace-up boots, green uniform, side-arm, and Ray-ban’s. It was something out of a Hollywood movie. After clearing immigration one of the policemen instructed me to follow him into an adjacent building. I knew this was dodgy. He led me to one small cell where there two men stripped down to trousers and two officers inside, the next room had half a dozen more officer smoking and drinking coffee, third room had two beds. He instructed me to sit on one and he sat on the other. He then said ‘Dinero” and put out his hand. I played dumb, and said “Dinero?” what is this for?, the bike? Entry tax?. He replied “No Dinero, no moto Bolivia, no dinero, mucho problema”. What a situation. I gave him US$10. He screwed it up and threw it back at me, and walked out of the room and left me to stew. The guide books all warn about the corrupt police here, but somehow you think it won’t happen to you, and not so blatantly. A few of minutes later he came back in. I decided to give him $50 (a large amount for such a poor country). The main thing was to get past this thieving prick as quickly as possible and without any major issues. He looked at the $50 dollars disapprovingly, and then said “Si, OK”, and led me back outside. We then spent another hour or so completing customs paperwork at another office (without having to bribe or pay anyone) for the bike and set off for La Paz.
My next concern was the road from the border to La Paz. It was a road where many hijackings, robberies and kidnappings take place. We were given advice to follow other traffic but this was not possible as the road was pretty quiet. We therefore just kept a keen look-out and maintained a healthy pace. Bolivia – I wanted to get out of it less that as soon as we got in!
We quickly found this threatening ‘cashola’ scam at the border happened to everyone else we met in the next few days who came in by road from Peru. We later teamed up with some Brits, Canadians and a Brazilian who all had cash demanded in exactly the same way, same room, same style. I would also add the continual road-blocks and ‘unofficial village tolls’ we later suffered in Bolivia, all designed to extract small amounts of cash from folks traveling through, really show just that Bolivia is corrupt from top to bottom. Sadly I met no one who put in a good word for the country. All were VERY happy to leave, and none had any intentions of going back. Oh, and in addition to the corruption it is filthy, with rubbish strewn about everywhere, many locals have serious drink problems, there are shotgun carrying security guards throughout the cities, it stinks, the cities are choked with pollution, the drivers level of skill/safety awareness is appalling, the food is terrible (both Lidy, I and other travelers we met got food poisoning), and the roads are pot-holed or non-existant (mud tracks). I think that gives a fair, honest and complete description of Bolivia before I move on to our days traveling through it.
I will send a letter to the Bolivian Embassy and see what they have to say on the matter.
Sadly, due to all the time messing about today with the trumped up corrupt border officials, we missed the temples at Tiwanako, the first proper civilisation that ruled this whole Lake Titicaca basin some 3,000 years ago, and the people the Inca’s based much of their own society on. This was the only historic site we wanted to see in Bolivia, but arrived an hour after it closed. We pushed on and saw the awesome backdrop of the Cordillera Real with its peaks reaching up to 6,500 meters, as we drew near to La Paz. At last something to make the day worthwhile.
La Paz itself, is a crazy, mad, loud, polluted mass of ageing buildings all heaped on top of each other in a very stunning mountain bowl setting. I was grateful at the bottom of the bowl there was the new part of La Paz, which escaped most of the chaos of the high parts or ‘La Paz Alto’ slums. We settled into our hotel, the Radisson, for 3 nights. It gave us some shelter from the din, along with 5 day-old stale crumbling bread for breakfast!
The day started in the luxurious offices of the Bolivian Consulate in Puno.
Welcome to Bolivia - Just before the Police Officers at the border stripe you for cash!
In the customs office I spent time studying the distance charts for Bolivia roads. I got a shock it, just like the map I bought in La Paz did not list distances in kilometers but instead in 'number of days'. For example I had allowed half a day to travel from Potosi to Villazon, and this chart said two and a half days! Some cells even went up to 7,9 and 11 days!! Could the roads really be that bad?
The shore of Lake Titicaca
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