Crossing the Bolivian Argentine border Part Deux

I was promised a semi-cama bus from Sucre to Villazon. On purchasing a ticket, I was shown this bus, which was more than comfortable for the 13 hour trip from constitutional capital of Bolivia. In reality, for my £7 paid, I received something which was fresh out of the cartoon Wacky races. I had opted for a back seat, back right corner next to the window. As this larger than normal lady approached the back seat I wondered if she was going to be my travel buddy for the next 13 hours and wondered if I had enough food for the both of us for that time, otherwise she might eat me. Luckily she took the back left corner so my bag of Pringles and 2 litres of Coca Cola lived to survive another day. The bus had ripped seats and my seat didn’t tilt back so before I had even left Sucre I was cursing that powers that be that for my seven English pounds, I had been a little short changed. There was no room for my bag in the main compartment, so they chucked it on the roof of the bus. Come morning time I didn’t expect to see it again.
The road from Sucre to the border was as bumpy and uncomfortable as they could have possibly made it. That coupled with the fact, my window had a tendency to slide open by itself due to the aforementioned bumps, meant that every ten minutes I was pushing the window shut because the cold air coming in was as unbearable as the road itself. By morning, we were in Villazon, and my bag was still on the bus. So far, so good. I was accosted by every Bolivian bus company offering buses through to Argentina. ‘Buenos Aires mi amigo’ ‘Puerto Iguazu’ ‘Salta’. ‘Cuanto a Salta senor’ I asked an older man, who quoted me £7 to get to Salta. It sounded good, but from my experiences of Bolivian buses, especially crossing the border, the Argentineans love to search a Bolivian bus, so I thought this time I would cross the border using the mode of foot then get an Argentine bus from La Quiaca, from there it would be 6 hours to Salta.

I exited Bolivia and got stamped into Argentina all in the space of 20 minutes. I couldn’t believe my luck. No finger search this time, no sly comments about the Falkland war and no comments about the 1986 world cup. Only one search of the bag and I was in a taxi to the bus terminal in La Quiaca. Just as I arrived there was a bus going to ‘Salta’ or so the guy selling me the ticket confirmed. It only went as far as Jujuy and I had to get another bus to Salta. During my journey from La Quiaca to Salta, as I was on a decent bus, I decided to get some shut eye. I reclined my seat back and put my bag with my lap top etc in next to me for safe keeping and fell asleep. I was asleep about 10 minutes, until someone sat next to me. It was a school girl in uniform; I didn’t pay much attention and fell back asleep. Again, I was asleep for possibly another 10 minutes until I felt the bus stop moving. I didn’t take much notice until about 2 minutes later when I turned to my left to see the girl who was sitting next to me had gone, along with my bag. It took another two or three seconds to figure out what had actually happened to me. I leap out of my seat, along using a few choice words and ran down to the bus driver. ‘Mi bolsa, mi bolsa ha sido robada’. The driver looked at me like I had just walked into his house on Christmas day and pee’ed on his kids’. He stopped the bus to listen to my vague tales about me falling asleep, seeing some girl sit next to me and then she had got off the bus with my bag. I was sure that the guy driving the bus was her dad, as he told me to sit down and report it to the police when I get to Salta. In the meantime, this little girl as hit the jackpot as this bag had everything from Blackberry to camera in. In the world of thieves she had just landed the Euro millions.

I got to Jujuy, grabbed my only bag from the bus, telling the guy who took my bag of the bus who asked for a tip what he would have to do for a tip and then walking past the bus driver and calling him another choice word as I boarded a bus for Salta. I was in Salta less than two hours later, with only one bag re-running through all the places I had been in South America over the last five months only to be ‘picked off’ by a youth. Part of me wanted to laugh, and then the other part wanted to hunt down the thieving cow and give her a good old fashioned dry slap. In reality, she was long gone. I found an internet cafe in the town centre to make the necessary arrangements to cancel my mobile phone. Fortunately, all my money, cards and passport were in my pocket as I had crossed the border a few hours earlier otherwise they would have been in there too. Now camera less, which is probably my biggest loss, as electrical equipment in Argentina is so expensive I will have to spend the 8 days having remember the sights I see and then when I fly to Auckland on 8th Nov I can pick up a new camera in duty free.

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