July 13

Today’s highlight is that we get to cross the border from Bolivia to Peru!  Sadly, that is the biggest hightlight.  We wake up to wind and unfortunately it never leaves. The trek today should be an easy 140k / 90 miles along rolling terrain along the lake. Unfortunately the wind is about 20+ miles per hour the entire day and it is either a direct head wind, or very near. We come up about 30K short of Puno as a result. We roll through the final town of Ilave at about 5 pm hoping to make the last 30K before sunset, set up camp by the lake and sleep. It becomes evident that we will not make it in time and will be pedaling once again in the dark which I’m still not interested in. We turn around, head back to Ilave (finally with a tail wind) and roll into town. This town literally looks like Bartertown from Mad Max. Struggling and haggard, we are are somehow greeted by a guy on a bike who leads us to a hostal. I guess we just had the look about us.  The old man who runs it is friendly and we’re happy to pay $8ea for the night. The room has HBO (ironically has Mad Max showing and I’m not even kidding). It has hot water but no cold so the shower is scalding.  The toilet doesn’t fill up so we have to manually fill the tank from the sink. Since we have been throwing caution to the wind all along anyway, we make dinner in the room with Taylor’s camp stove, catch up on emails with surprisingly strong wifi, then sleep.

The gateway to Peru

Immigration office.  Got through without a hitch

Our hostel for the night.  I’m not kidding…every building in town looked like this

Our host for the night.  He had a busted arm and probably should have had Taylor’s helmet sooner

Making lentils in the room.  Don’t try this at home

The views of Lake Titicaca along the route