The day starts out with us waking up, freezing cold, around 5am, on the bus, at the border crossing from Chile to Bolivia. The crossing didn’t officially open until 8am, and didn’t seam to really actually start taking people through until closer to 9am, so it was a bit of a wait just hanging out at this point… Oh well.

Once we finally made it through, the bus still had a long line of cars ahead of it, so all us passengers walked over to this little village on the Bolivian side where the bus driver said we should get breakfast. We were fortunately able to exchange some US dollars into Bolivian Bolivares and get something to eat! And what a surprise and welcome it was. Our first llama meat!

One of the passengers had noticed that we (obviously) had no clue what to do so he was the one that suggested we get this dish from one of the local ladies on the side of the road. That’s what he got, and it seems like, most of the rest of our bus did too. It was delicious! We forgot what it was called but it was essentially llama jerky, though more tender than that, and served with a couple different types of potatoes and a spicy sauce.

After this short reprieve, it was back to the bus for another 3 hours or so to get into La Paz. Once finally at La Paz, we unfortunately had to go to the other bus terminal to catch our bus to Copacabana. This was a bit of an experience as these are not the same type of buses we had been used to; the local Bolivian buses seem to be closer to large vans than true buses. Either way, our luggage got strapped to the roof, and off we went for the last 3.5 hours of our trip…

And once again we had a surprise on the trip, another lake crossing! And again, this one was different from last time. The passengers had to all get out of the bus (van) and take the people ferry across the lake, and wait on the other side until the car ferry brought our van across. We admit, it was kind of nerve wracking to leave our luggage strapped to the bus with us not around, but, everyone else was on the same boat (haha!) and it was all okay in the end.

Our bus is NOT the green one…

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We finally arrived at our final destination (Copacabana) at around 7:30pm, just about 24 hours after the journey started from Chile. And not knowingly, we made it for one of the cities biggest celebrations of the year, celebrating the virgin of Copacabana!

It was great, live music, people everywhere, tons of food stands cooking delicious local delicacies. We checked in to our hotel, walked around and ate a ton of different bites of the local cuisine, and after some time of doing that and the long trip, with our full bellies it was time for bed.