Today the mileage was not to bad so we took our time getting moving.
We were on the road by about 930 and about 20 miles out of Juliaca we ran into another motorbike traveler at a toll booth. Pete Chester from Las Cruses, NM. We stopped and chatted with him for a bit. Dude is 66 years young and riding a Yamaha XT225 down to Terra Del Fuego on his own. How cool is that??
It was nice for us to talk bikes and English with someone!
After saying goodbye to Pete we headed south along Lake Titicaca which is a massive lake at 12,000 feet that is split by a border of Peru and Bolivia. Very pretty with some snow capped mountains in the background.
We got to the border and Dan kick started the customs machine into gear. Within minutes we were officially out of Peru and into no mans land.
He then headed into the offices in Bolivia only to come back out a few minutes later saying they wanted $135 US each for a visa to visit Bolivia…
When Dan went in everything seemed normal until they saw the US passports. Then he was escorted back to the boss’ office. The boss tells Dan to sit down and starts pulling out forms and sticky stamps. Dan said he heard the fee and thought he had misheard it – $135 each – can’t be – so he just went along filling out forms. Then it came time to pay and the fee really was $135 each!!
It all sounded like a total scam – in fact the “official” stickers had $100 on them – which he just crossed out with a pen and said “it’s now $135!” – of course no English is spoken. Dan told him that we weren’t going to go thru Bolivia – just back into Peru and down to Chile. El Jeffe said “well, you need a tourist visa to come into Bolivia – no other options”
After we talked for a few minutes Dan decided to check it out on the Internet. He walked straight past the immigration offices and into the border town in Bolivia. He found a couple Internet cafe’s but none were working and they said “only Peru”. So – Dan walked back across nomans land and into Peru to find an internet cafe to see if these dudes were trying to fleece us. He did find out the fee was correct. It is only charged to US Citizens because the US charges the same fee to Bolivians when they come to the US.
When Dan comes back from the Internet cafe – “What could possibly be worth seeing in Bolivia for $270 god damn dollars!!” I believe was the quote. We chatted about not going into the country and finding another way down to Chile. All the while I was chatting to a pretty cool dude named Jose that worked for the Bolivian customs office and he informed us its because of good ole George Bush upping the visa fees for Bolivians to visit the US. So in response they upped the fees for us. Thanks Bush, even out of office you’re the gift that keeps on giving.
There were other visa types available – one for $85 which Dan tried to get them to issue – but they were not interested. El Jeffe brought in his henchman to yell at Dan – this guy used the “volume” translation method – if your listener doesn’t understand you then you just yell louder… Dan tells them fine – let’s do the tourist visa’s at $135 each – so the paperwork is processed and money is paid. Then El Jeffe tells Dan that he needs to get copies of the passport, stamps, etc… go across the street to get the stamps etc. That’s when Dan’s patience snapped – “so, you just charged me $270 for the f*cking tourist visas and you can’t make copies of the passports on your god damn copy machine right there!” – sorry, no. So – copies were made across the street.
In the end after we paid it and the rope blocking the road was lowered, we were let into the country. Jose processed our bikes in for us and we were off to La Paz. After a few kilometers we were stopped at another check point to see if we had the right paperwork no doubt. We were then charged another 10 blolivano’s to have that rope lowered so we could head to La Paz. About $1.20. At that point, it wasn’t the money it was that we had to take our gear off and fill out some forms and pay the money – a pain in the ass.
We had reservations at a Hostel and we had GPS coordinates for it. La Paz is a city of at least a million and is in a large bowl. We wound our way down and down into the bowl. All the while keeping an eye on the gps. Mind you the GPS has no roads for this city just a dot where the coordinates are. So we end up in a maze of one ways, dead ends and nightmare of being on the wrong side of a hwy that had no overpasses in sight. After at least an hour we found arrived at the “dot”. Only there was no hostel. There was an old man there and Dan is asking him where the hostel is – the guy keeps saying “Maybe” – but nothing is making sense. About that time, a woman of maybe 50 comes walking up with a cell phone in one hand, way too much lipstick on and she is obviously under the influence of something – she starts sluring out some “timmy fell in the well” and Dan says “nada, gracias” then he starts his bike and rolls off about 100 yards. The woman starts grabbing at John – touching his coat and pulling at the bike…. John just has that affect on women…
It seems the coordinates were wrong. Again the fun of finding things in these cities without maps or street names is really not fun anymore. It was now dark and we were both tired. So we found an internet cafe and looked up they’re web site again. Got some new GPS coordinates and lucky for us it was only a few miles away. Pretty cool place. www.theadventurebrewhostel.com We enjoyed a few games of cribbage and drank a couple beers on they’re rooftop bar.
We are looking forward to a few days of chilling out, bike maintenance, laundry and catching up on blogs/email.
Cheers!
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