The breakfast room opens at seven sharp for the feeding of the predators, the respective pancakes are ready, as well as the coffee, and somewhere a lady with a cap on her head, heavily worn by sleep, is floating around.
Cold coffee
I might still make it to the nearby bus station by half past seven. The bite into the supposedly warm pancake - terrible. Ice cold. So I flush it down with hot coffee, but that' s not happening. It's even colder than the pancake. Cold coffee is unbearable at any time, but early in the morning it is one of the seven deadly sins that can only be answered by shooting or strangulation.
But before grabbing the pump gun, I point out to the lady in the politest terms that absolutely everything is ice cold. Oh, she laughs, and sets the corresponding button on the coffee machine to 'hot'.
Why should I get angry, that's Bolivia, Man! I have to skip the coffee, which can logically not be hot in the short time, and drink it later at the bus station, however, a light has dawned on me. Could it be that the coffee, already simmering for hours the day before, is simply reheated the next day? Have I finally found the reason why coffee in this country tastes just awful?
Stranger in a strange land
Pouring rain is the farewell greeting from La Paz, a pity, we have slowly become accustomed to each other. However, in this city - much more than in Sucre, for example - I have felt like a stranger in a strange land, like Valentine Michael Smith in the novel of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein:
An stranger from Mars named Valentine Michael Smith lands on Earth. He is human, but was raised by Martians - and is now confronted with a future world that is completely alien to him. His story is a story of questioning boundaries: of coexistence, sexuality, religion and economics. Robert A. Heinlein's probably most programmatic novel has long since written cultural history.
This is, of course, a pathetic exaggeration, but these strange and inexplicable feelings sooner or later assail every traveler. Not everywhere and not always. It obviously needs the necessary ingredients for it, which act externally (place, people, experiences...) and above all internally (mood, tiredness, resistance...).
So I leave La Paz just like my inner attitude to it, a little rainy, a little gray in gray, happy to say goodbye, and yet with a gentle regret.
From La Paz to Puno
Anyway, the bus is full, for once I'm not the only foreigner, the Bolivian sitting in front of me is the only local among all the foreigners.
A mixture of the most diverse languages and nations has gathered, all on their way to Peru. Dark green, wet, somehow lifeless plains glide by, occasionally a cluster of low huts, here and there a few cows or sheep.
It's a boring ride, just the way I love it. The mind moves away from the external world, becomes a part of a completely different one, a world in the future or the past. The imagination is never more stimulated than on a long and monotonous bus ride. Nothing is distracting, sometimes a spot of color in the middle of the green desert, perhaps an Indio, a llama, a river percolating in no man's land.
And the rain keeps falling, splashing against the windows, it's dark and grey, the landscape distorted by the streaks of water on the window. It is wonderful. Once again the dream of endless driving on, someplace, nowhere fixed, all that matters is the ride, the movement, and all you are is the spectator having no influence on anything at all.
Hills and snow-covered mountains are shimmering on the horizon. It takes a while for a black expanse to appear, small waves rippling the surface.
With an area of 8.288 square kilometers, Lake Titicaca is the largest lake in South America. It is located on the Altiplano plateau in the Andes; the western part with 4.916 km² of the lake belongs to Peru, the eastern part with 3.372 km² to Bolivia. In terms of surface area, it is the eighteenth largest natural lake in the world; its surface area is about 15,5 times that of Lake Constance (including Untersee) and almost as large as Corsica.
I must confess that my memories of this very same trip have vanished. But when the bus stops at the shore and the passengers have to get off to cross the narrow bay with a decrepit boat, the images come back.
This is primarily due to the fact that nothing has changed much.
The boats for the passengers are still a dread (probably the last time I wondered if I might make it to shore in the event of an accident), those for the buses a risk of the first order.
Only the number of houses on the other side of the lake has increased noticeably. Indios sell the same things, three bananas cost the equivalent of a few centimes. Somewhere hidden there is a bãno, (the respective names for toilets change from country to country, but the corresponding quality is the same) and soon the bus horn is booming.
We move on, but it starts to rain again. The ride continues, along the lake, where a small island greets, rain-soaked meadows are lining the road, sometimes a few houses, but mostly it's just green and wet and pretty lifeless ...
Rain on the border
The border between Bolivia and Peru is shrouded in dark clouds.
Today's route is actually not that long, just 250 kilometers, yet ithe tript is supposed to take over eight hours. The following two hours explain the reason.
The procedure at the border is split into two steps. First, passengers are led to the Bolivian border post, where passport control is carried out. However, the building is so small that only about four to five people can find space in it at the same time. The rest have no choice but to join an infinitely long queue in the pouring rain.
You have to consider that other buses have arrived at the same time, which means that the queue is accordingly long. Very long. And it proceeds incredibly slowly, because the two officials take it very seriously.
I packed an umbrella at the last moment, the best decision ever, and so I am one of the few remaining reasonably dry. But then, after what feels like ten hours, we are done, but a few hundred meters later the same procedure starts again on the Peruvian side.
Puno
And so we arrive in Puno on Lake Titicaca, again on almost 4000 meters altitude, and the only memories left of this city are neither the wonderful 'Floating Islands' nor the magnificent downtown, but the fact that at this time I had read all the books I had taken with me and was therefore almost going crazy with withdrawal symptoms ...
At least this problem no longer exists today thanks to eBooks and WIFI, and so I can calmly devote myself to the sights of the city center, which really has a lot to offer. Not surprisingly, it starts to rain again, but my umbrella ...? Damn it, forgotten on the bus.
So after dinner in the city center I run back to the hotel like someone stung by wasps, of course wet and angry and with revived realization that age progresses massively ...
But a brief look at the real highlights of the city should not be forgotten, even if I skip them this time ...
