A Series of Unfortunate Events

Good choice, I´ll start with the bad news. Apparently, the Copacabana of legend is actually located in Brazil and not Bolivia. I know, I know, you expected more of such experienced world travelers. Trust us, we were more dissapointed than you are right now, despite your claims of vicarious living. Bolivia was an experience, however, and if anything the exchange rate alone was worth the trip. I´ve never felt so wealthy in my entire life. The next unfortunate event was the bus-driver strike that swept across Bolivia the day we arrived in Copacabana. Our plans to travel to La Paz, the capital, were more or less ruined, though the new forbidden fruit status of that particular trip left us a little dissapointed. We did stay on the Isla Del Sol, an island on Lake Titicaca located an hour and half boat ride away from Copacabana. And when I say boat ride, I mean friggin boat ride. We were traveling at maybe 5 miles an hour over what must have been 5 to 10 foot swells. The island was beautiful and entirely worth the slightly nauseating trip, though the hike up to our hostel nearly killed us. That´s not an exaggeration. I saw God.
Anyway, the next day we took a boat back with some Quebequois and Vegas-ites. We greatly enjoyed hearing U2, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles and Greenday destroyed by a heavy french canadian accent. Needless to say, I helped out on most of the lyrics (apparently pronounced lie-riks).
After the boat ride we got on our bus to Cusco, which turned out to be the most stupendously horrible bus ride any of us had ever experienced. The bus stopped multiple times for at least 20 minutes each time for reasons I just could not decipher, despite much effort. We were also forced to endure Predator 2. But not just any viewing of Predator 2. A Shwarzenagger-less, black and white, spanish version of Predator 2. On the Isla del Sol I saw God. On the bus to Cusco I saw Satan himself. I´ll also mention that I spent the majority of the bus ride standing, as 50 percent of my seat was occupied by a mammoth Peruvian woman, the kind of woman who changed the airplane ticket law.
After that bus ride we found ourselves in various states of Code Black!* We grabbed a taxi to our hostel, ate some quick street vendor food, and passed out in the first dormitory style hostel of the trip.
We awoke to a terrible discovery- Jed had screwed up big time. The surprise was not in Jed´s inherent worthlessness, but more in the nature of his mistake. Jed had confused the dates of our registration for Machu Picchu, and so we spent a frantic morning trying to locate a street that, according to the locals, seemed to exist in every single direction. Luckily, the strike in La Paz had prevented us from traveling there, which had ensured our early arrival to Cusco, which then saved us from a rather obnoxious loss of money and potentially missing the trek altogether. Thanks Jed.
*Code Black- Based on the American terrorist warning system, which we do not fully understand and are pretty confident is completely arbitrary, we have been using a color system to articulate our intense needs to either intake or export food in its various stages of digestion. Now maybe you have some idea of how we felt after that god-awful bus ride.