The hostel there had a nice pool, which turned out to be extremely necessary after only 2 hours of riding in a dune buggy at the mercy of a madman driver whipping around the huge sand dunes around the town (which is built around this oasis, really just a stinky mud hole, but compared to the bleak horizon of sand I guess you take what you can get). The dune buggy tour also included some sandboarding, which was fun but sooooo blazing hot, I actually got burned from the sand a bit. Kind of like snowboarding, only you can't really do much except go straight down the hill at top speed with minimal control or skill. Fun though. I only attempted to stand up on some of the hills, not all, because many that they dropped us off at were so steep that you couldn't even see the bottom of it when standing at the crest. That and several people did some really nasty face plants and shoulder tears etc. Didn't really think it was worth the pain.
We were only there for one night before heading off to Puno, but did manage to meet a few Australian guys who are also planning to be in Salvador for Carnaval, so maybe I'll end up meeting them again.
Then a long 17 hour night bus to Puno, on Lake Titicaca, which was more beautiful and bigger than I had imagined. We ran into a bunch of people we knew from the language school in Cusco there, so that was nice to catch up. Out of that city, we booked a tour boat to the islands of Uros (floating islands made of reeds that were first started around 1000 bc.) and Taquile (UNESCO named for the best knitters in the world-all male). The tour was really nice, and we even jumped in Lake Titicaca off the dock at Taquile, which was FREEZING cold, but definitely worthwhile to say that I'd done it.
The next morning we crossed the border over into Bolivia and found a boat at Copacabana to take us to the Isla del Sol, although we almost missed it because we forgot to change our watches 1 hr ahead. We stayed the night at the island there which was beautiful, really awesome views, but pretty cold at night (the lake itself is 3500m above sea level). Ran into this Australian couple who I've now met randomly at least 5 times (I think they're beginning to think I'm stalking them!) so us and a bunch of their friends hired a boat in the morning to the north end of the island, where there were some ruins in the place where the inca creation myth was started. Slowest boats EVER, as it took even longer to boat there than to walk back, even with a demoralizing drizzle that turned into downpour for the last half hour of the walk. Got back to pick up our stuff in time for the last boat to Copacabana, where we found a really cool little cafe run by hippies and I think I fell in a little bit of collective platonic love with them and their establishment. The best hot chocolate I have had in South America, and possibly ever, given how cold and wet I was, which started off the infatuation, plus the music was a little indie, reggae and funk mix that I was really loving, and then I used their bathroom which was not only clean and had toilet paper, but actually smelled of cleaner and had hand soap- UNBELIEVABLE!!!! And then when I came back out I saw the chef feeding the last of the hot chocolate pot to a stray dog, which was so cute, and one of the other hippie guys hanging around offered to cut my hair for free, which was suspect until he showed me his really professional portfolio from all the work he has down for fashion designers, magazines etc. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time because we had already bought tickets to La Paz, which ended up being quite the eventful bus ride.
Irene had some sort of food poisoning, and so she was feeling pretty nauseous-to the point where she got me to ask the bus driver to pull over, even though we were on this narrow, winding mountain road in the pouring rain. He kept refusing, just giving me a bag instead, and I was arguing with him, saying we had bags, but he really should pull over or she was going to barf everywhere. Suddenly I become aware of a big commotion behind me and I turn around to see Irene puking out the window, but because we're driving it is not only blowing back against the other windows but she is hyperventilating because she says that she can't breathe with the bus going so fast. Practically the whole bus, of mostly locals, is all gathered around her, yelling at the bus driver to stop, which he finally does, muttering under his breath, especially due to the cries from this one hippie guy sitting in front of us, whose dreadlocks she promptly pukes in on the way to the door of the bus. So then I'm half out of the bus trying to comfort her and half in watching our stuff, while the bus driver keeps revving the engine to try and hurry us up. Not the best ride ever, not to mentio nthat a few minutes after this episode we all had to pile off again in the driving rain so that the bus could ferry across a river while we were in a shitty little boat that met it on the other side.
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