Hello Bolivia

Today is valentines day. Excellent. A day that many of my friends unanimously agree is undoubtedly commercial, yet somehow it never fails to put the female half of my friends in a spin.

For example Maaike. After insisting, all day, that she wasnt part of the Valentine´s day hype, she decided to tease me for not having received any Valentine´s cards.

Do i care? No, not really. Im tough, honest.

****

I left Puno today, finally.

I was getting so tired of the monotony. Its particularly difficult to meet people, other backpackers, most of the travellers are old, or hard-to-meet couples.

So yes, it was an exhilarating feeling to finally be on that bus to Copacabana. It lasted about half an hour...until my right buttock began to go numb and i had to switch to my left.

Soon both legs had gone dead, and i was beginning to feel warm, but couldnt take off my jumper because i was squeezed in with the window on one side and my friend Maaike on the other, who was squashed up against one of the shortest, and widest Peruvian women i have yet seen.. and her bag of chickens.

The scenery, however, was something else.

Where the town of Puno was grey and dreary, the landscape just outside of Puno was suddenly infused with color. There were farming communities with simple houses on grassy plains, shepherds tending sheep and pigs, with a backdrop of mountains, clear blue skies and the crystalline shores of lake Titicaca.

After 2 1/2 hours, we finally reached the border town of Yunguyo. I cracked my back and looked around for some transport to the migration office at the Bolivia-Peru border, 2km away.

We were about to jump in a taxi when two pedal-tricycle owners offered to take Me, Maaike and our two new friends, and our backpacks to "la frontera" for a total of us$0.70. We clarified the price again - no mistake - then set down the quiet country-Peruvian road, in the front of our little pedal-tricycle, feet up on the front bar and the wind whistling in our hair....

However, there are few experiences that have made me feel more like a disgustingly wealthy foreigner intent on exploiting the cheap local labour, than having an uneducated, unprivileged and underpaid local man sweating away years of his life behind me while i sit back and enjoy the view. From now on, i´ll only use motors.

We turned a corner and a hill opened up before us, the Peru-Bolivia border visible at the summit. Our cyclist garbled something to his mate (who was cycling with our other two friends), who didnt hear and was already making his way up the hill.

We kept on, but as the hill steepened, we jumped out and helped to push.

Finally arriving at the top, everybody sweating and panting, we paid our cyclists the $0.70 we agreed upon, and watched their faces drop. We quadrupled their price as a goodwill, but still they werent happy.

I tried to explain to them that they shouldnt have told us a different price in the beginning, but of course they didnt understand... and thought that we were more westerners trying to exploit cheap local labour.

It was the first time it had happened in Peru and i was relieved that it would also be the last, as i happily crossed the border into Bolivia.