Stepping into Bolivia

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Early one morning I went up the the Bolivian border, to La Quiaca. Here the buses have been demoted from the long-distance service out of BA to the shorter routes of Northwestern Argentina, so they're a bit older, shabbier, smell of diesel fuel in the seats at the back.

Leaving Salta we crossed a broad plain of green fields. In the distance stood green, rumpled, fuzzy hills. The bus climbed and climbed and soon I began to feel breathless again, as I did in Cuzco while the green fuzziness turned to a smoother nap that became stoney as the hills turned to mountains. The mountains closed in on us and we came to the whorled land. The slopes stood in great sedimentary curves and arcs as if poured like thick batter that congealed quickly. On it grew very thin vegetation like mold in bands of green.

We approached La Quiaca across a broad, flat, plain of short grass with lumpy hills in the distance and above them rose white cloud fortresses in the blue sky. Occasional trees with a brown adobe dwelling huddled beneath. Wire fencing with rickety wooden posts, a few cattle grazing, some goats, llamas and sheep.

We stopped at small communities along the way, with people getting on and off. By now all faces except mine and another backpacker were aboriginal. Stooped old women with twin braids ending in ribbons, purple to match a purple sweater, black-eyed children looking at me with bright interest, older men in broad-brimmed hats.

Many border towns are run-down and a little sinister. This isn't the case for La Quiaca, but it hasn't anything of interest for tourists and the only thing it has for voyagers is two customs and immigration offices facing each other across a stoney riverbed where pigs root around amongst the plastic debris left by high water.

I crossed the border into Bolivia just to get my passport stamped, in case I don't come back this way. The Bolivian border facilities are in a ratty, old building with worn wooden floorboards and a slow lineup waiting patiently outside. Bolivian women wearing tiny, high-crowned bowler hats, wide skirts, stockings and sandals come and go without pausing to wait in the line, carrying their goods in brightly-coloured blankets slung over the shoulders.

Coming back into Argentina I stood in a huge lineup that was very slow, possibly testimony to inefficiency but more likely evidence of insufficient budget for the job. Behind the building an uninterrupted flow of porters, each carrying a heavy weight of something on their back, hurried unchecked across the border simply by crossing the very shallow stream in the riverbed below the bridge. It was almost comical to watch these people, all in single file, hustling along, each hoping that no official would step out to stop them, each, like a single fish in a school near sharks, hoping not to be the unlucky one. Who can say what the border officials' perception of this is? Too many mules, why choose one or two if you can't stop them all, too much bother, although it's much more likely they're just wearing corruption goggles.

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