The longest journey....ever!

---

Hey all,

Again it seems like soo long ago that we last updated you with our travels, and since then we have again covered a lot of miles! We left Iguazu Falls in Argentina and decided to head west and across into Bolivia for the next chunk of our trip. This was easier said than done and we boarded our first overnight bus which took us 25 hours to a town called Tucuman (still in Argentina) where we then had a wait of 13 hours before our next 12 hour night bus to the boarder town of Salvador Mazza. We eventually reached the boarder and were dumped in the middle of nowhere when some "friendly" locals offered to help us get across the boarder (but not before someone tried to pinch some things from Alices bag while we were getting off the bus!!). So with backpacks on and having been travelling for two days already we walked about a kilometer to the boarder point and crossed into Bolivia where everything changed within 100 meters! Peoples faces, food scenery and culture were all instantly different and after the walk across the boarder our "friendly" locals made a demand that we pay them for the privilage of a ten minute walk about the equivilant of nearly 80 pounds....we ended up giving them about 10!!

The next leg of our trip was to the closest town on the Bolivian side so we hopped in a taxi to the bus station at Yacuiba where we waited another full day for our third night bus in a row to take us to Tarija. Now, the busses and roads were very different in Bolivia the journey was only about 200 miles but took us over 12 hours.....yep thats less than 20 mph!!! For around 11 nd a half of these hours we were on dirt roads on the edge of a mountain with no barriers, kerbs, lines and with traffic in both directions! It was a pretty scary trip and we were glad to finally arrive with only one thing having been stolen on board......my hat!

We spent around five days in Tarija recovering from the 50+ hours on busses, three nights in a row and countless hours in bus terminals and had our first experience of Bolivia which was great! The food was great, the people friendly, the scenery was beautiful and we had a nice time celebrating easter with the town completely decorated with orange flowers and everyone in high spirits! After feeling nice and rested and more prepared to get on another bus we moved on to Tupiza. A small town around 3000 mtrs up which is surrounded by multicoloured mountains on every side where we again relaxed, soaked up the atmosphere and took a horse ride into the mountains. We saddled up and headed out for three hours into the amazing landscapes that surrounded the town!

Since then we moved on to Uyuni where we based ourselves for a few days before we headed out ona three day tour of the worlds largest salt flats, volcanos, lakes, flamingos, hot springs and geysers.....which we will blog about in a few days.

Ok, well that brings us about half way up to date so stay tuned, hope you are all well and keep in touch!

Ally and Alice x

---