Peru / Bolivia Hop – Crossing the border
Part 1 – Puno – Copacobana
Leaving Peru we were headed to Bolivia. We had heard many stories about crossing the boarders by land so decided to take advantage of a great bus service called Peru/Boliva Hop which provided a comfortable bus and assistance in crossing the border. The Peru Hop goes all the way from Cusco to La Paz but an advantage of this bus service is you can get on / off at different stops and rebook your next ‘hop’ online. We were joining the bus as Puno, crossing to Boliva then stopping in Copacabana for a night before continuing to La Paz.
We were picked up at our hotel at 8.30 and taken to the coach parked by the lake. The coach was surprisingly a double Decker and was already quite full with young people who had traveled from Cusco. It was clear this was a service well supported by young back packers including English people.
The bus left Puno and our guide explained the process for the journey. The first part of the journey to the border took e a couple of hours to reach the border. Once at the border we needed to take all our luggage with us and go through passport control to leave Peru. Once approved we walked with the whole group and our luggage to the border and simply walked across. On the other side we were met by a new Bolivian guide who helped with entry form to Boliva. The whole process was surprisingly smooth except for the walk uphill! We did hear the next day the border was closed so realised it is not always as simple as it was for us.
From the border to Copacobana on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca the journey was only 10 minutes. We had booked a nice lodge hotel a little out of town to spend a night relaxing by the lake side. The only problem we had was getting a taxi. We had arrived on a sunny Saturday afternoon and it looked like all of the town was on the lake on boats or having BBQs! Finally we managed to get a taxi for the short but bumpy ride to our lodge. As always we were allocated a room up stairs so yet again had to lug our luggage up stairs at high altitude. We have been seriously questioning why we have so much luggage, every time we carry 20kg up and down stairs.
The lodge turned out to be basic but relaxing little huts in lovely grounds and it was a pleasure to sit in the garden chairs outside our cabin relaxing. Later in the day we walked the 20 minutes back into town to get some dinner. The altitude was yet again taking its toll and despite being a short walk I was feeling ill so as soon as we got into town we went into the first hotel/restaurant we came to and got drinks and a bit of food.
Copacobana is a small town that is clearly a holiday weekend spot for Bolivia’s as well as a stop off for tourist like us. For some reason most of the buses to La Paz depart at about 6pm but the buses coming in arrive a lot earlier so even if people don’t stay the night they will find themselves in town for a few hours.
After a reasonably comfortable night and breakfast we relaxed in the hotel grounds catching up on blogs and other things until it was time to depart for our bus to La Paz.
Part 2 Copacobana to La paz
The scheduled duration for our journey was 4.5hrs. This seamed like a long time but we knew it would involve a stop. On leaving Copacobana we climbed hills by the side of the lake and good great views of the lake from above. AS we continued to climb we also start to see snow covered Andes mountains out of the window. Our guide mention something about a couple of hours and the a short crossing before continuing on the other side of the lake but we did not really understand about the crossing till we got there.
As the coach drove down to the lake side we could not see the bridge across instead we could see in the water lots of floating structures. Our guide told us all to get off t
he coach as we would cross separately to the bus. We walked to the lake side to see the floating structure were actually barges that carried cars and buses to the other side while passengers go in small boats. The wooden barges did not look too stable and we were all relieved to not be on one of them with the bus!
After the crossing we continued into La Paz. Initially arriving in poor out lying areas the bus made its way down steep hills to the city centre. Part of the service included a drop off at your hotel which was an excellent service and very welcome where arriving in a city in the dark.