The Bolivian frontier
From Salta, I planned on travelling through to Uyuni in Bolivia in one swift go. As it turned out, Bolivian travel is rarely swift, and the single go included a number of frustratingly long pauses. However, I was lucky to meet two other people from the same hostel in Salta who planned on making more or less the same trip (they would be getting off the train a little earlier). Between the three of us, we had a nice little travel group, something we noticed as we boredly stared at the tiny TV screen at the hostel, as our bus didn't leave until 12.30 am. For those of you that are confused, that's 00:30 or half past midnight.
There were also other reasons for not wanting to travel alone: while Chile is definitely safe, and I feel comfortable in Argentina because I more or less fit in both physically and linguistically, I was a lot less sure about Bolivia: it's straight 3rd world, plagued by what Lonely Planet calls the "triple crown" of underdevelopment (illiteracy, low life expectancy and something else I've now forgotten - probably extreme poverty, of which I saw plenty), a country where everyone is indigeno and Spanish is more of an afterthought than lingua franca - and my Quetchua is mighty rusty. At least that's what I'd heard about the country.
At the very least, I'd quelched (is that even a word?) any remaining fears I had about not having the little piece of paper that foreigners need to leave the country without paying a big fine. I told you about how I didn't receive that document here. In Buenos Aires, I'd gotten the phone number of the German consular section and gotten in touch with them about my problem - on about the 15th try. (The upside to having the phone number in my passport for so long had been that it got me out of a bribe attempt by Argentine cops, who visibly fretted upon opening my passport and seeing the name, address and phone number on a paper therein. But that's another story all together.) When I finally did reach the consulate - I'd had to call the emergency number in order to actually get someone on the phone - I was told that if Germans are given any papers at entry, they are just statistical questionnaires, and only Americans are forced to suffer the pain of holding onto the special entry paperwork.... haha!
So the three of us set off from the hostel in Salta, A German, a Czech, and an Israeli.
The first thing you notice when you take a bus to the Bolivian border is that it's probably the worst bus in Argentina. Otherwise, the Argentine bus system is amazing, but the buses up to the border are pieces of crap. Moreover, there were more Bolivians and Israelis in the bus than anything else, something that holds for Bolivia in general. Also, the normal order of the buses begins breaking down: tons of campesinas had huge bags and blankets full of god knows what being loaded into the bus, and most of them had one or two dirty, snot-nosed kids tagging along, too - and they were of the opinion that they shouldn't have to pay for the kids. The conductor saw this differently, and soon there was a massive argument about who exactly needs tickets immediately in front of me at the bus door. The conductor pointed out that the lady can't bring two kids on for free and expect all the other foreigners to pay, then looked at me for confirmation, which is something I felt obligated to agree with. Anyway, the bus driver let me on, then continued his fight with the woman, but not before she pushed one of the kids in the door behind me and when the bus driver pulled it back out, claimed it was my child.....riiiiiiiiight.
We arrived in the Argentine border town of La Quiaca at the beautiful hour of 5 am, an hour early and two hours before the border would open. Chilling at a wonderful 3400 meters above sea level, it was really cold there, so we grabbed our packs and headed into the station in hopes of finding something warmer. All we found was a station full of Bolivians huddled under blankets and a vile smell. Tom (the Israeli guy) and I also found that some kind of weird, hot motor-oil smelling fluid was on our packs, something I'd noticed when I pulled my jacket out in the cold and dark, but not realizing the extent. Like I said earlier: not the best bus. I was fortunate in that although I got the mystery fluid all over my bag, that where it stayed - on the outside. Tom was not so lucky, and as he pulled the pieces of clothing out of his bag, horror was written all over his face.
Before we knew it - or had fully assessed the damage to Tom's property, it was time to head towards the border, so we strapped on our packs and got going. This decision was aided by our being freezing cold, so we wanted to move. It actually was pretty cool walking through the dark city as dawn came over the horizon, and it got light really quickly, so after some pictures at the border, we were able to cross in to Villazón, the Bolivian border town.
Once you cross the border, you know right away that you are in a different country - and this country's a lot poorer. Everything's really dirty, people are trying to sell you anything that can be made from llamas at the border, and buses are ratcheted up about 4 feet in order to make it across the Bolivian "roads." And despite being a border town and transport hub, Villazón doesn't have a single ATM open to foreign cards.
We ended up camped out at the train station for a couple hours, during which time Tom fully inspected the damage to his bag - hilarious damage, I may add. Each pair of pants had a dark crotch stain, while every shirts was embellished with dark areas around the armpits. Eventually, however, our train departed, and the fun had to end. I will add, however, that the one good thing about Villazón was my first exposure to Bolivian food: for a whopping 6 Bolivianos (the name of the people and the currency...), which totals some $.75 American, I had a 2 course meal that was quite tasty. In the train (which moves at about 20 miles per hour - 9 hours to Uyuni, a grand distance of 160 km) they had a) toilets and b) TVs/movies. While either one of those may seem normal to you, believe me, in Bolivia they aren't.
The first movie they showed was "Blood Diamond" starring the always arresting Leo DiCapprio. I'd hoped that my first viewing of the film wouldn't be on small screen 35 feet away with incomprehensible audio, but despite this I was able to enjoy the film. The second movie was some Bolivian production, and I use that term loosely: they apparently don't have audio editing equipment in the country, and much of the movie consisted of people conversing in the middle of the altiplano, in other words in the middle of nowhere and all I could hear was the wind in the microphone. This was topped only by the scenes in "Buenos Aires," which were actually a Bolivian pig stall. At that point I wished they didn't have TVs in the train.
We finally arrived in Uyuni at shortly before 1 in the morning. One of the things about Bolivian public transportation that makes it so special is that all departure and arrival hours are at the most horrid times imaginable. In this case, I than had to find a hostel , and after following some Israelis for a while in an unsuccessful attempt to find a hostel with heating, I went to the HI. It was slightly warmer there than outside, and that did the trick for me.
