Immigration by candlelight (entering Bolivia Che Guevara style)

We were supposed to stay in Puno last night, but we needed to get into Bolivia before the strikes started. So we were on a bus by 4.30pm and were racing towards the border before it closed. Well, we I´m pretty sure the buses are affected by altitude too because they go very slow up hills and and the roads aren´t much to speak of anyway, so ´racing´ may be stretching it a little.

Anyway, so we were driving at 80kph towards the border and were treated with a moonrise that puts many sunrises I´ve seen to shame. The moon looked huge (maybe because we´re closer to it!) There was some really lovely pastoral scenery along the way as well.

About 10 minutes before the border, we´re told that we have to pretend that we don´t know our guide (no working permit for Bolivia) and are given instructions for the border crossing. Get off the bus, go to Peru border control, walk 300 metres and then you are at Bolivian immigration. Oh, and the Bolivian border closes in 20 minutes so get a move on.

Peru was fairly simple and then we head towards the other side. I walk straight into the rope much to everyone´s amusement. Then we cross a dark bridge and start looking for immigration. The entire place in darkness and once we´d been walking for about five minutes, the road came to a dead end. Debbie asked someone confidently in spanish where the customs were (thanks Debbie´s cussie Chris) and we went back the way we came and finally found the immigration office (the clock is ticking, they closed 20 minutes, but that was 10 minutes ago).

The immigration office was also entirely in darkness and we stood in a queue before being given a form in spanisht to fill out. We filled the forms out by candlelight and Nicky´s wind up torch. I was winding like mad while everyone else filled in their forms. Another woman had a candle but she was determined not to share it and positioned herself so that she blocked the light. Then someone held their mobile phone for me while I filled in my form.

Another queue to see one of two customs officials who were operating by candlelight. They stamped my passport and form with no fuss (Despoina had a bit of trouble because the guy didn´t know where Greece was).

Finally, we were all through and back on the bus. Some other tourist had tried to get on our bus, but luckily our guide had words with the bus driver and said that there was no way he could stay (he had a stash of wacky backy which she´d spotted).

And then...da dint, da dint, da dint (that´s the Jaws music by the way) when we´d been driving for 20 minutes we got stopped again by an army road block. One of them boarded the bus and wanted to see all of our passports to check that we had the appropriate stamps. I very nearly pulled out my wad of US dollars from the money belt at the same time as my passport. Luckily I was able to manouevre so that the money stayed in.

You´d think that was enough excitement for the night and that perhaps we´d have just arrive at the hotel and have a nice long sleep. It was not to be. We arrived at the bus terminal, collected our bags and headed off to catch the bus to the hotel. It never turned up. Luckily we were with another Gap group so there was 14 of us, including a couple of blokes. We huddled together in two circles on the side of the street, talked in broken spanish to the policeman who came to check on us (and warn us that this wasn´t a good spot to wait).

Ten minutes later, our guide turns up with a bus. She had commandeered one of the local buses and we all piled on. Quite a few people tried to catch the bus (it still had it´s destination on it´s window so you can´t blame them really) as we wended our way through La Paz to our hotel and a very welcome shower and bed.