Bowling into Bolivia

Our hostel last night was not the best, a little on the freezing side, especially after Anna used up all the hot water (not her fault, no one could have thought there would only be 10 minutes hot water!), but we all slept fine.

We were up early, managed to post some post cards, find some food (no breaky at our hostel) and got down to the bus station ready for our bus ride to the border. Of course the bus was running on Argentinian time and was about half an hour late. It was an uneventful trip through lots of nice countryside like we saw yesterday (although not as spectacular). We arrived at La Quiata (sp?) and walked down to the border. There were no signposts so we basically asked everyone we met along the way, including rather heavily armed police and military who were lovely. Once there, we found the window to get ourselves stamped out of Argentina, which was apparently very inconvienient timing for the oficial on duty who wanted to eat his lunch.

That done, we headed across a stone bridge to Bolivia. There isn´t a river or anything, just a space full of rubbish, a couple of stray dogs and a pig. There was a big line but a girl helpfully told us that we didnt need to wait in it, we could just head right in. A form was filled in, stamped and we were in Bolivia officially!

The street leading to the train and bus stations is full of little market stalls and places to change currency, so we changed our pesos to boliviarios and headed up the street. It was actually quite hot in the sun.

We got to the bus station and were immediately surrounded by people trying to sell the benefit of their bus service over the other. We established that the trains weren´t running and Anna picked a bus company that looked ok. By now we needed lunch, so headed over to the hopefully named Oriental Restaurant. We are so missing Asian food - the Italians have made it to South America but no asian resturant owners have apparently.

We were disappointed, no Asian but a decent meal of chicken, rice, noodles (maybe that was the Asian bit) and chips. We still had some time to kill so sat in the sun and ate pears.

The bus was, of course, half an hour late and certainly isn´t like the luxury Argentinian ones. The roads also aren´t the same, we are definitely in a developing country. We had 2 hours over 95km of bumpy, winding dirt roads. I tried to imagine I was in one of those vibrating massage chairs but it didn´t help much. They seem to be building a new dirt road, wider (i.e. more than one lane) and with actual things like bridges rather than fords, so the trip may get somewhat better.

The people here are exactly what you think of from the pictures. Tiny little people, the women with long black plaits, full skirts, those flat brimmed hats and aprons. The kids are incredibly cute. We went through a lot of small towns and the houses seem to be mostly mud brick with either thatch roof or tin held on with rocks. There is certainly a major economic difference crossing the border.

Totally covered in dust and vibrated to bits we arrived in Tupiza. Our hostel is really cute and we had a great dinner at a resturant filled with fellow backpackers who we swaped various hints and tips with. Sounds like we have picked a great place to stay in La Paz.

Tomorrow we are going to see the town and maybe even do a little horseriding, then it will be off to the salt flats. We have a great week coming up!