Curried Haggis in the Andes: Buenos from Bolivia!!

After our week of overeating in Arequipa we finally managed to tear ourselves away from the luxuries of a big city and got on a bus to Juliaca near the shores of Lake Titicaca. Upon arriving in Juliaca we were anxious to get out of the town sharpish (the Lonely Planet guide to Peru only contains a paragraph on Juliaca and two sentences of that are dedicated to warnings of muggings and "aggressive drunks"). We were briefly worried when the only vehicles in sight at the bus station taxi rank were tiny motorcycle tuk tuks but we soon managed to flag down a normal car. Even though it was an estate car it was a struggle to fit ourselves, bikes and gear in, resulting in Sunny and I basically being crammed into the rear passenger footwells with a small mountain of bicycle behind/on top of us while Andy enjoyed the comfort of the front passenger seat. We took the taxi to a very small village just out of town before riding to Taraco for the night. While this was only a short ride of 20km or so, by the time we had started it was already approaching early evening, resulting in an extremely sketchy dusk ride along a relatively busy road. Luckily the road was both tarmac and flat and after a group effort worthy of a team time trial in the Tour de France we arrived in Taraco just as the light edged onto the wrong side of borderline for riding. After finding a hostel and some dinner we decided to celebrate receiving our degree results in the only way possible: with not one but TWO beers each, a watermelon, a pack of biscuits and a tin of condensed milk. Unfortunately this soon all got too much for Sunny and he knocked his beer over, making a terrible mess on the concrete floor of the hostel but this was soon mopped up with a convenient pile of out of date Peruvian newspapers.

The next morning we were treated to a breakfast of coffee, bread, corn on the cob and what we think was llama cheese. Although delicious at the time, this cheese would soon come back to haunt us.

We left Taraco and headed for the Capachica peninsula which promised a few days of easy, scenic riding around Lake Titicaca. We stopped in Llachon which is a village where tourists go to get off the beaten trail and experience the "real" Peru and as such contains a plethora of quite swish hostels. We found it quite amusing watching busloads of tourists enjoying the "authentic" experience after our experiences of endless rice and potatoes and staying in rooms with dirt floors and tin roofs. After one night in Casa de Valentine we switched hostels due to Valentine attempting to swindle us and enjoyed a day relaxing on the beach. It was now that the aforementioned llama cheese struck. Just before dinner Andy made his way rather swiftly to the toilet to deal with some involuntary purging of his digestive system. Minutes after I followed suit as my body decided to reject it's stomach contents. A night of little sleep and much misery followed.

As the next day dawned we decided it would be a good idea to get a minibus to the nearest big town, Puno, as we would much rather be ill in the presence of hot showers, food that wasn't crisps and chocolate and wi fi providing comforting emails from Mum.

The next day we were all feeling a lot better and began cycling towards the border with Bolivia, reaching it after a couple of days cycling along the lake. The border crossing itself went very smoothly allowing us to continue a short distance into Bolivia and reach the town of Copacabana (not to be confused with the much more glamorous beach in Rio de Janeiro) for a late lunch. Sunny's price negotiation skills then managed to bag us a room in a proper hotel with a private balcony on the beach front for the princely sum of £4 per person a night!

The highlight of our stay in Copacabana so far has been riding a swan shaped pedalo around the bay. Once we had got over our crushingly disappointing lack of speed on the water, the captain of the vessel (yours truly) proceeded to guide the vessel through a series of ever more intricate maneuvers between the other boats moored up in the bay. This went surprisingly well until a perhaps slightly over ambitious nautical maneuver happened to coincide with becoming caught in the wake from a passing boat, causing us to drift worryingly close to a posh looking speedboat prompting paniced (and not entirely helpful) suggestions from Andy for Sunny and I to pedal backwards. Thankfully, due to my sublime captaining skills, a maritime disaster was avoided and the rest of the voyage was without incident (apart from the humilation of being outrun by a duck we we trying to chase).

Tomorrow we plan to cycle to Huarina before catching a bus to La Paz (there's a big hill in the way that we don't fancy cycling over). Hopefully there will be another update from there!

Toby