Cusco to La Paz – Oct 2025

With our late return to Cusco from Machu Picchu, along with the lack of dinner, we were very happy that breakfast was included at our accommodation in Cusco. The breakfast room had a lovely view over the city and we took our time the next morning. On the other hand our accommodation was right next door to the Cathedral and the bells were ringing from 5:30am in the morning, every half an hour! Unfortunately we both had sore throats so not much energy for exploring Cusco – besides it was the day after a multi-day hike – definitely a rest day!

The next day we plodded up to Sasquewaman – we might have been “used” to altitude but it was still hard work getting up to 3,800m. Tom continued to make use of his tourist ticket that afternoon, but I slept and hoped to shake my lurgy.

That evening was our first overnight bus of the trip – we left Cusco around 10pm and got into Puno at 5am. We had a buffet breakfast at the stop and then we’d elected to go on a tour to the Floating Islands on Lake Titicaca. It was interesting to see how the islands are created, though we had to awkwardly go through the residents trying to sell us handicrafts.

Then it was back to the bus and onwards to the Peru-Bolivia border. It was all very straight-forward, and we were able to change some money (in retrospect I should have changed more as the rates were reasonable).

Next stop Copacabana (no, not the famous beach in Brazil) for lunch. Apparently we were eating at one of the best restaurants in town – if so, then I shudder to think what the others were serving. Then our second boat tour of the day, this time to Isla del Sol where we did a one hour hike along a small section of the island. I’m not sure who stuffed up but we had to go back and collect 3 women who hadn’t been on the boat on the way out. That meant we were running quite late by the time we returned to town and had to hot foot it back to the bus.

We were on different buses for the section from Copacabana to La Paz, unfortunately they were far less comfortable. The suspension seemed minimal, probably not helped by us being at the back due to our late arrival from the boat tour, along with the road being quite bumpy. Surprisingly we got our third boat trip on Lake Titicaca for the day. The bus needed to cross a narrow section of the lake on a barge that was big enough to take a bus and not much else. The passengers all had to pile off and squeeze onto small boats before rejoining the bus – it was after dark by this point so it all felt pretty dodgy, especially when one of the small boats motors smelt like it was going to catch on fire!

Anyway, we all survived and ended up back on the correct bus (there were 3). We made it into La Paz at 9:30pm, where the bus company organised a taxi to take us to our AirBnB. We only had a few minutes hanging out on the streets before our AirBnB host arrived to let us into the apartment – but long enough that we attracted a bit of attention and concern as to whether we needed help.

The next day we spent a frustrating couple of hours trying to find a cambio (money changer) that would give us a decent rate [hence my earlier comment about wishing we’d just changed all the BOB we needed at the border]. Having walked half way across town we eventually did so then we had cash to pay for breakfast. Tom got his haircut by someone else for the first time since the early 2000s for the princely sum of 20Bs (A$2.50).

We spent the rest of the afternoon riding the telefricos over the city, before embarking on another overnight bus trip that night. [As a side night, it was really helpful to book 2 nights of accommodation even though we weren’t staying the second night so that we had somewhere to hang out before the late night bus departure].

We got into Uyuni about 7am, and our guide for the next leg of the trip was waiting at the bus station.