Bolivia - Round 2

The view from our zero star hotel, overlooking Lake Titicaca. The bathroom of this place looked like something out of a Bolivian prison.

Visiting the celebrity chef for the second time in Oruro, Bolivia. Not sure what his secret is, but he makes the best damn lamb spine in the world (or at least in Oruro, Bolivia)

What we look at each day as we rot away on buses. Somewhere in northern Argentina.

Once leaving Cusco, we headed to Copacabana, Bolivia. Situated on the shores of Lake Titicaca, it was a nice little town and luckily we got there during one of their biggest festivals of the year...no idea what they were celebrating but the town was absolutely packed with drunken revelery any hour of the day. First night there we (Jason, Shane and I) wandered into the main party and were surprised to find ourselves the only gringos there. We were soon accosted by locals who wanted to talk to us and by the end of the night found ourselves in a drunken conversation with the mayor and his cronnies on how to improve Canada/Copacabana relations. The guys that are in charge of the fireworks carry these metal poles around with explosives attached to them that seem to randomly explode. Im not sure how more people aren't killed, but at one point he basically attacked us with it (out of fun..yay!) and managed to burn holes in all our clothes.

After discovering we couldn't see the reed islands (main reason we went to lake Titicaca) from the Bolivian side, we decided to hop on over to La Paz two days later. Given that this was my third time to La Paz, I was less than thrilled to be going, but decided to make the best of it. We had a tearful goodbye with the Australian guy who kept following us (hope you made it down the road ole boy), then set about buying a bus ticket to Villazon, which is at the bottom of Bolivia and one step closer to Buenos Aires. Unfortunately the buses decided to go on strike, leaving us with fewer options. Spent the rest of the day wandering around town buying weird things to send home and visiting one of the local barbers to get a shave and a haircut.

We managed to get a bus to Oruro (where we enjoyed a second meal from celebrity chef Don Roberto - http://wayfaring05.blogspot.com/2006/01/prior-to-salt.html) and from there a quick 17 hour train to Villazon, where we crossed the border and caught another 9 hour bus to Salta, where I sit now. It was really bizarre travelling the whole area for a second time, and a lot of people were wondering why the hell we were doing it, to which we would just shrug and tell them we're retarded. Tonight we finally treated ourselves to a 'Super-Cama' bus to Buenos Aires, for those that don't know the South American bus system, Super-Cama is the best of the best and essentially involves us lying in beds, watching movies, while whisking along at 120 km/h.