Off to Bolivia

(Kevyn here)
We decided a few weeks earlier that we probably had time to visit Bolivia. Our friends, Pete and Ashely, who travelled around South America for several months last year, spoke very highly of the 4x4 tours of the slat flats in the southwestern part of Bolivia. Of course, always wanting to emulate our friends, we decided we had to add that to the itinerary also. But we really didn't know much about Bolivia. We managed a peak at anothe traveller's guide book and got some place names on the internet. With a little bit of research and a lot of hope, we embarked on a journey to get us to Tupiza, where the tour we wanted to take was leaving in just two days.

Getting to the tour on time (9am Saturday morning) required us to travel by bus from Salta north to the border town of La Quiaca, Argentina. From there we would make our way across the Bolivian border. This was cause for some trepidation as we had read on the internet stories of hours long border blockades, tedious and slow searches by the Bolivian customs officials, etc. Once across the border we would need to again bus from the Bolivian border town of Villazon to Tupiza, where we could finally embark on our 1006 KM journey. A lot of travelling to do a lot of travelling!!!

(Dave's turn to talk!)
We decided it was best to leave Salta early. No, really early! We were in the taxi by 5 AM and headed for our 5:30 AM bus north. Luckily the great Hostel in Salta let us keep some of our belongings there for the week that we were gone, so we left with very light loads.

The main bus company north is Balut, and they are no fancy bus company - at least for their shorter runs. The 5.5 hour trip lasted about 8 hours and when we arrived in La Quiaca the bus was packed with all the standing room taken. Once there we made our way to the Bolivian border and was inside Bolivia in minutes (so much for our worries). A several block walk to their station passed us by vendors of all types selling just about everything you could imagine.

We left Salta early because we were told that there were only 2 times a day to catch the bus to Tupiza where our tour was to depart from. Arriving at the bus station we were approached by several ticket sellers with tickets to Tupiza. They kept naming earlier departure times in effort to earn our business. In the end all buses left at the same time and we choose the one that stuck by their actual departure time and they offered to watch our bags too.

We had a few hours in the border town of Villazon and that was about all you need, mostly a bustling market and international trading town with Argentina. The trucks coming from Argentina do not generally come through the border. They mainly stop near the border and all goods are transfered across by people hauling huge boxes on their backs wrapped/attached to them by blankets. We were later told that they were paid about 1 peso (US$.33) to haul around 45 kilos several hunderd meters. Legend has it one guy was carrying upwards of 300 LBS and collapsed dead on the bridge. Nonetheless, hauling that weight at that altitude is a feat in itself.

The bus north to our departure town of Tupiza was about a 2 hour run. These are all very dusty dirt roads now in Bolivia and our bus was being filled constantly with water. The 2nd bus guy as I call them - the ticket and luggage guy had a partner and found a great way to entertain us along the way. Each time they filled up the radiator with water they would also fill a few plastic bags with water as well, making rough water ballons. As the bus was going it had an interesting method of deciding who to pick up or not, as people just flag the bus down. I have no idea why they would stop for some and not others, but I think it had something to do with the water balloons. Our 2nd and 3rd bus guys would see people up ahead flagging the bus down and hit them with the water balloons as we flew by. This must have been a regular occurance as a few times we were hit by water balloons as we sped by. (Someone later told us, this might be something left over from recent Carnavale festivities??). One hit the window right by my head and I was glad the window was closed. This 2 hour water war must also be why the right side of the windsheild was missing and replaced with plastic - they must have really pissed someone off some time.

Kevyn wants to also add: this bus was our first on this trip to be covered inside with carpet. Walls, ceiling...it was truly a sight!

We finally pulled into Tupiza and were met with the usual people trying to get you to stay at their hostel. We first retrieved our very dusty bags from the bus and were met by yet another person trying to sell us on their hostel. I glanced at the brochure and said that I thought we had reservations to stay there and the lady pulled out a piece of paper with our names on it and we were whisked away to a waiting jeep and were off to the hotel. We had made contact with a Salar tour company from Salta and decided that we would do the 4 day tour with them. We had never given concrete assurance that we would be doing the tour with them but they still showed up and picked us up. The tour is a pretty expensive thing to do by Bolivian standards and they were doing their best to get us signed up before we hit the streets and saw the other 30 or so tour operators. We had done our homework and decided to do the tour with them so they had nothing to worry about and the royal treatment of being picked up from the bus station was great and the room was not too shabby either.

We spent the rest of the night getting our stuff organized and exploring Tupiza. We ate at a pizza-pasta type restaurant (gee, what a surprise!) and headed to an early sleep as we had had a long day, and had incredible headachces because of the altitude, about 10,000 ft. We had spent most of the day trying to hydrate and acclimatize to the altitude. Upon our arrival to the hotel we were also given Pupusa (sp?) tea from local herbs that is supposed to (and did) help with the headaches.

COMING UP NEXT: What do get when you cross 2 Bolivians, 2 French, 1 Canadian, 2 Norte Americanos and 8-10 hours a day in an Isuzu Trooper??? I bet you wanna know! Tune in next time (same travelblog channel) to find out! Until then, tchau tchau!

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