When I woke up this morning, I had a bad headache. I think it's the combination of alcohol at altitude (4000 meters). My hypothesis is that because of the dry climate, water evaporates from my body quickly - thereby concentrating whatever else is in my system. Now I'm no doctor, but it sounds feasible to me. I took an aspirin and headed for the shower - not knowing what scalding pain or frigid water awaited me. After taking a 30 second shower because of the ice cold water, I actually changed my clothes. It may sound somewhat disgusting, but it's been fairly cool during my stay and none of my clothes have gotten dirty.
After getting ready, I headed down to breakfast. I guess that I must have been the first one awake, as there wasn't anyone else around. I'm not sure if it's because the rest of the travellers were young (I know I'm generalizing) and had drank excessively the previous night, or if it's because I can't sleep very late. My opinion is that while I'm on vacation, I want to ensure that I'm maximizing every minute of this temporary freedom. In a short two weeks, I'll return home to continue living out of the american dream of capitalism and debt.
One great aspect of being out in the morning is that you get to see the real citizens of a place. Although there weren't all that many tourists, I can walk down the streets and market stalls thinking that I'm the only outsider observing daily Copacabana life. I began to hear clanking of steel on concrete - I walked a bit further persuing the noise only to find a line of people several blocks long. Everyone shared one commonality - they all had LP tanks. There was a truck exchanging full tanks for the depleted ones and the entire town must have come out.
After walking around and relaxing, I prepared myself for another 13 hours of bus travel. This time both of my bags were not going to leave my site! I couldn't get by with one pair of clothes for the remainder of my trip! I don't have many comments about the bus trip - it was long. We stopped for long periods of time without any explanations. The local police/military would come on the bus at checkpoints and rifle through the natives bags. I'm not sure what they were looking for, but they didn't treat them with a lot of respect. If they were looking for drugs, I bet that they would find far more on the travellers than on the citizens. The Bolivians must be used to it, because they sat there calmly looking at the officers going through their belongings.
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