All we wanted was to get from Copacabana to La Paz. It’s only three hours by road and therefore, you might think, not too difficult to achieve. Booking our bus tickets was easy. We walked into one of the many tour operators, asked the price for the tickets and what kind of bus it would be and, satisfied with the answer handed over our 30 BOBS (£3).
Bus rides in Bolivia
We were more sceptical than we otherwise might have been due to a tough journey from Arequipa into Copacabana. We were sold tickets for the second leg of the journey (Puno to Copacabana) which needed to be collected from a guy in the bus station. Predictably, when we arrived, no one had ever heard of the guy and the company we were expecting to travel with didn’t even have a bus running due to the elections. But out of nowhere a friendly man offered to call our contact for us. Hurrah! Someone who knows the guy! But wait, apparently he’s not in Puno at the moment. That’s ok, our new friend has a bus going that way and is happy to sell us three of the last five tickets. How convenient. Starting to get suspicious, I asked if he’d phoned the contact number given to us. ”No es funciona” (It doesn’t work) Hmm. ”Puedo usar tu telelfono?” (Can I use your phone?) Apparently that phone only connects to one service provider. Sceptical, off I hop to a payphone to discover that out contact is on his way and has our tickets for the very bus we were considering paying again to get onto. Lying bastards.
Anyway, that experience out the way, we were approaching buying bus tickets with a little more cynicism.
We arrived at the office half an hour before our departure time to find a group of gringos already in the office. They were going to La Paz too it would seem. The guy who had sold us the tickets not 24 hours beforehand asked us where we were going. When we answered “La Paz” we got a lovely grimace which let us know we were in for another interesting afternoon.
There is, we were told, a strike taking place and the road to La Paz has been blockaded. The bus will not be going. Excellent. Here we go again. Interestingly, getting our money back was simply a case of asking. After that we needed to find a way to get to La Paz.
The Blockade
The only option open to us was to get into a minibus to the blockade, walk the half an hour across the picket line and pick up another bus on the other side. Sounds dodgy right? That’s what we thought, but without any other options available we set about negotiating the best price to the blockade. By this point we’d accumulated more gringos and were now an easy-for-bargaining group of nine. Interestingly, I was the one who spoke among the most Spanish and got to play the part of negotiator.
Beyond suspicious at this point, we refused to pay anyone but our driver (on arrival) and wouldn’t agree to a price before we’d seen the transport. We ended up with two taxis taking us the 30 minutes to the blockade for 10 Bobs each (£1).
The blockade was, quite literally, a blockade across the road of hastily piled up soil and rocks strewn in awkward places. Our taxis stopped to let us out, we piled on our luggage and started the hike. The scenery was absolutely stunning, as was the impromtu company, but our bags started to feel very heavy as we trudged along in the afternoon sunshine. Did I mention we were carrying nearly 30 kilos in 26 degree heat at 4,000m for 45 minutes? We passed the village who had started the strike where all the residents appeared to be enjoying an afternoon picnic in the sun and finally arrived on the other side of the blockade.
Walking past the blockade
We were overjoyed to see two minivans and their drivers sat waiting there. Our joy vanished when we were told that they were waiting for a pre-arranged pick up. The next place we could get a ride would be a three and a half hour walk further on. However, as by this point we had grown to a group of thirteen, the drivers couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a quick buck by taking us to the next point and returning for their booking. 5 bobs a piece got us to the lake crossing point.
Our teeny tiny boat
We’d expected to have to cross the lake at some point and had we been with a bus, it would have gone across on one of the barged while we took the passenger boat. We piled onto the tiny little boat, luggage and all and tried not to breathe in the exhaust fumes coming from the spluttering engine.
The ten minute crossing had us battered about by the choppy water, several times looking like we might capsize. Sam spent the journey gripping tightly to my hand and praying we reach the other side without needing to swim. We did of course and we all scrabbled to get off the boat and onto dry land.
Squeezed into our minibus
From here finding a minibus to complete the last 120km to La Paz was easy. The thirteen of us fit nicely into one minibus and the driver only asked 10 bobs each to get us to the centre. The journey’s difficulties seemed to be behind us and we broke out the snacks and cheesy 80′s hits to supplement our good mood.
We started coming into the city and the driver pulls over. The one Bolivian lady in the bus started to shout at the driver about how she didn’t know where we were and we couldn’t get a taxi from here. Here, wherever that was, was apparently as far as the minibus was going. What we didn’t know was how far that was from anywhere else. It turned out that we were still 10km from the centre and the driver refused to go any further. When we refused to pay, he refused to let us have our bags back from the roof. Stalemate. Not wanting to see our bags drive off into the distance we paid, he drove off and we’re left standing in the middle of a busy intersection trying to negotiate with various taxi drivers and minibus drivers who have conveniently appeared.
After much back and forth the three of us jumped in a taxi and reluctantly paid a further 40 bobs for the pleasure. It was only as we continued to drive that we realised how very far away we’d been left and how reasonable this taxi ride really was.
Unimpressed, hungry and in real need of a cold beer we arrived at our hostel. In the end the journey which should have taken 3 hours on one bus at a cost of 30 bobs took 5 hours, six mode of transport and 40 bobs.
After such an amazing time in Peru, Bolivia is, so far, not endearing itself to us.
What nightmare journeys have you endured? How much have you paid to get yourself out of a sticky situation? Is Bolivia worth more of our time?
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Hang in there, as Bolivia is both the most frustrating, yet gorgeous countries in the world!!! I had some of the most challenging moments of my travels in Bolivia as well. Every journey has its arduous moments right?
Andi of My Beautiful Adventures\’s last post…My Wedding & Honeymoon: Day 6-10 (Part 17)
I think you still made a good time, 5 hours is not to much considering there was a roadblock… Bolivia is beautiful, but the life of the people there is really hard. so enjoy and realise how blessed you are
What an amazing journey, seems they have unscrupuless people everywhere.