Travel and Communication

The day before Jen arrived in Peru I went to the Cusco bus station to pre-purchase our Cusco to La Paz bus tickets.  The experience of an overnight bus can be pleasant or unbearable depending on seat choice, road conditions, driver quality etc.  I wanted to explore our options and purchase the best tickets within our price range so that Jen’s first overnight bus experience would be positive. 

I was quite proud of myself for communicating so well with the friendly salesperson of San Luis bus line.  I confirmed three times that we would not have to change busses.  The only stops on our journey were to be an hour break in Puno to give the passengers a chance to purchase breakfast and then again at the Peru/Bolivia crossing, where the bus driver would walk us through the boarder formalities.  We were to leave Cusco at 10 pm and arrive in La Paz at 1pm the following day. 

As the bus’ motor revved at 10:15, I turned to Jen and commented that she must be a good luck charm.  Everything was going so smoothly, all of our modes of transportation up to that point had been so simple to find and was always on time, much different than all of my other experiences.  I forgot to knock on wood. 

We arrived in La Paz at 5:30 pm the following day after transferring between three different busses, a janky combi, and a boat.  The boarder crossing, which took over an hour was anything but straightforward and required that we hike across the boarder while our bus driver tossed our checked bags onto the pavement and then drove off leaving us in a state of confusion about which of the three immigration offices we should check in with first. 

That adventure wasn’t quite enough for us.  We decided to book a second overnight bus to Uyuni that left 2 hours after we arrived in La Paz.  We wanted to be as efficient as possible and just make it to our destination, we could sleep next week.

After much more bus-ride booking mis-communication we arrived in Uyuni at 7 am after 33 hours on the road.  Within an hour we had our tickets booked for a Salar de Uyuni tour and at 10 am piled in the jeep that we called home for the following 3 days. More on that trip later, but in the meantime check out the pictures I have posted