I was excited and feeling good about my decision to finally get moving and walked into the bar around 8 to have a beer and see who was there to bid farewell too and sure enough I ran into three of my old dorm mates: Daisy from England, Mary from St. Louis, and Harry from Australia who seemed to be in kindred spirits. We all thought the other side had already left and were happily surprised to see each other. After exchanging Jungle/Mountain stories from the last 3 days I went to grab another beer and when I returned I got a coy, “so Joey what do you think about Copacabana?” I had skipped Copacabana and Lake Titicaca originally because of my detour to London and had ruled it out as something I would go back and do because it was in the complete opposite direction I was heading. At first I was pretty resistant, as I had already been stuck in La Paz for much longer than I intended and I had my bus ticket for the next day and was keen on getting to the monkeys. The days prior, Mary had been pretty vocal about her drinking abilities and even hinted that she could beat me in a chugging race. To all my SAEbros, the only 3 people I had ever lost to in my life were Dan Kennedy, Shea Buckner and a big ol’ Dinosaur named Barrett, whom you know are pretty formidable opponents. So, I told the 3 of them, fine I’ll race Mary now and if she wins, I’ll go with you guys, thinking that there was no way in hell I was going to lose and I could put the thought of another detour to rest. Right from the gun I could hear in Daisy and Harry’s voices that I may genuinely be in trouble. I buried the second half and slammed my mug down, just a fraction of a second after Mary’s. Dumbfounded and a little embarrassed after I had been pretty cocky about the whole thing, I conceded and returned my bus ticket the following day and the four of us would head off to Copacabana two days later.

When I woke up I thought long and hard to make sure I wasn’t being overly spontaneous as I tend to be after a couple cervecas, but the way everything panned out it just didn’t seem right to fight fate on this one. I’m so happy I didn’t because that week of time may have been my favorite span of days thus far. The four of us (dubbed Team Tetris by Harry because everything we did seemed to just always fall right into place) all got along great. I hadn’t laughed consistently like that over a span of days in a long time. We spent two nights in Copacabana enjoying fresh trout, a couple bottles of wine on a pedal-boat duck and commandeering some other dragon watercraft before we hopped on the afternoon boat to Isla Del Sol on Lake Titicaca where we would spend two nights as well.

Isla Del Sol was much more beautiful than I anticipated. We stayed on the south side where you could see both sides of the Lake when standing at the top. Snowcapped mountains emerged from the clouds that hugged the water along the horizon. It was surreal. The first night we enjoyed what was my favorite meal of my trip so far at a pizzeria outside on the grass overlooking the lake for sunset. It wasn’t just any pizza though. We created our own item on the menu and asked the chef to make us some trout pizza. It may not sound normal, but it’s damn good. Look out for Joey and Harry’s Exotic Pizzas coming to a neighborhood near you.

After dinner we made a makeshift fire and hung out for the night playing Musical Stones shifting around our rock couches, trying to balance the need for warmth with the tolerance of smoke. One of the best (and sometimes the worst) aspects of Bolivia is that there aren’t really any rules. There are no lanes on the road, people pee wherever they please and I’m pretty sure if your wallet was big enough you could do basically whatever you want. If I would have started a fire on the grass outside of a hotel near home I would have security and probably the cops and firefighters on the scene within minutes. In Bolivia, instead we had two local girls about four and six wander on over and demonstrate their pyro skills for a half hour until we finally had to stop them before they burned that mother down.

The next day we lounged by the lake until we were able to finagle a rowboat in the afternoon and ended up getting towed to a remote cove where we skipped rocks and discovered that our champagne was really sparkling cider, which was still delicious. We spent one more night out in Copacabana for Team Tetris’ last hurrah and sadly parted ways the following afternoon.

It’s funny how it all works out sometimes, so many variables had to align just right for me to end up there, but it turned out to cap off the most fun times I’ve had yet in South America. I’m thankful the wifi didn’t work at the other hostel and, more importantly, that Mary knows how to drink a beer.