My first overland boarder crossing

Bananas taste amazing here. They have sort of a more real, slightly sweeter flavour. The best ones are the fully rip ones (not the slightly green ones, from their long travel to NZ) and brown on the skins doesn’t mean bruised it means just right. The fruit is so yummy.

When you take minivans (collectivos) the drivers seem to always stop and make deliveries on the way. It is kind of cool. When we went up for the mountain biking we stopped about 5 times for various deliveries. I don’t know if its personal deliveries or they get paid for it. All the same it is a good use of resources.

Me at the border

I had my first overland border crossing today. I was all prepared for along boring process (and super excited as well). But it went really smoothly and was a lot of fun actually (once we got to the Bolivia side). Once kicked out of Peru and past no mans, land immigration in Bolivia was a good laugh. Pretty much straight away the four guards worked out I have almost no Spanish and started up conversations with the boys. Dave and I were first in and they asked Dave is I was his girlfriend and if he had bit me! (I have sores on my arms still from falling down the stairs. They asked my age and it was about then I realised I need to get a bit better at understanding and better at my numbers. Once we were done (I still don’t have full knowledge of the conversation between Dave and the guard) it was Spikes turn. I later found out he also got asked if I was his girlfriend (responded to with an approval of Muy Bein) and also if he bit me. I think they had had some pretty funny kiwis through in the past as they seems pretty happy to joke around from as soon as they had seen our passports. I have a photo to go with this blog of me at the Bolivian border crossing which I will put up when I get it off Spikes camera (he’s in bed with a nasty flu today).

I managed to work out how to get a takeaway juice for Spike this morning with the help of my phrasebook. I asked the street jugos senor if I could take the glass to my sick friend and he was sweet with it. Really nice guy. It was a small glass of pure orange juice and only cost 3Bs (check out the exchange rate and be amazed)