Tupiza - Gave me a Sore Bottom

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We did get the 5am DIRECT bus to Tupiza but they lied because it wasnt quite a direct bus. We got dropped off at 8am in some random dead town which we still have no idea where or what it was called to this day.

They said we would get another bus at 10.30am. Luckily we made the man give us our ticket back or we would have hadto buy a new one. We didnt get another bus though we got a jeep.
At first we didnt think it was going to be too bad until they tried and succeeded at fitting 16 bloody people into it. That was an interesting ride. Took four more hours in total.

When we got to Tupiza we found it was a really sweet town. Very quiet and not much going on but nice. We booked into a hostel and arranged our day of horse riding for the next day.

Nik was so excited she was like a kid in a sweet shop so that was cool. I on the other hand was a little concerned as I have only about 3 hours experience of horse riding from last time I went travelling. Nik was mentioning cantering and galloping which slightly terrified me.

It was only us on the horse ride so it was really nice. We had a boy who said he was 16 but looked about 12 if that, as our guide. He was sweet though. The scenery was beautiful, it did look like the wild west at times as our guide book had described.

We got given our horses, which looked healthy (Nik told me). We started off walking which was really relaxing. Then later Nik suggested we trot, which oh my god that hurts your bum. It took me ages to get the rythm and then once I did we would go back into a walk. I didnt realise horse riding was such hard work. We also did some cantering and galloping as well. I really liked galloping but our horses were so lazy that they would pop back into a trot constantly, that hurt. Theres just no warning.

In the end I had to take the guides horse, he took Nikitas and Nik took mine. Dont know why but it worked and the horses listened to us more. Apart from Niks kept going into a trot just to get to the front and once he was at the front he would get lazy and walk so slow. That really annoyed my horse and the problem was they were always in competition which meant if niks trotted then so did mine which meant more pain for me, lovely!!

We did have such a good day though, I know Nik loved it which is wicked because she was looking forward to it for ages. I swear to god though, that was 3 days ago now and I am still in agony and aching all over. I did that for you Nik, remember that, he he.

We left Tupiza the next morning at 4am. We got a direct bus but because we were crossing over to Argentina (yeah baby) we had to swap buses for some reason. We got off in Villazon (Bolivia) then had to walk for over half an hour across the border and then to La Quica (Argentina). This was exhausting with our backpacks. We then got our bus to Salta.

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