Motoventure Day 19: Puno to Desaguardero

(written 11/9 @ 10AM) Simple easy day yesterday – loaded up the jaumoto and headed towards Desaguardero, the border town between Peru and Bolivia. Word was that at 8AM on Monday we could start getting stuff down to cross into Bolivia so we wanted to start early.

The drive was quite uneventful, a simple 150km along a mostly paved road (though it was quite rough for most of it and I had to swerve a lot to avoid potholes). About two hours out of town I caught up with Rob & Will who were still having problems with their moto and we basically hung out most of the rest of the way – often with me racing ahead to try to get cool photos.

The coolest thing of the day was spending almost all of it with Lake Titicaca next to us on the left – the scenery was amazing. At one point we also saw lots of flamingos in a little lake, and overall the drive was quite populated with a constant string of affluent
(compared to the others we've seen) villages on the side of the road. Lots of cows, sheeps, and alpacas!

We crashed at a pretty nice hostal in Desaguardero and I spent the afternoon mucking about with my moto to provide better waterproofing for my gear in back (just in case) and reduce some flapping. I also watched Zombieland and really enjoyed it!

Today we've been mucking about with the paperwork in Desaguardero – everybody is weighed (the ten teams that are still in it and are here) but we're waiting for one guy to type out everyone's paperwork and he types slow. So right now we're hoping to get out of Peru around 2PM and have no problems in Bolivia (yeah right) and get to La Paz with ease!

One funny(ish) anecdote – I don't have a visa for Bolivia yet, so I asked yesterday if I could go into Bolivia, get the visa, and come back. The Peruvian border guard said that should be fine, as did the Bolivian border guard. When I talked to em/immigration at Peru though, the guy said I'd be crazy to try that – the Bolivians would probably hit me with all sorts of stuff to prevent me from leaving. He recommended I wait, thus I did.

Hopefully things come together after this and I get to see the stuff I want and we don't have any more paperwork drama!

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