On
re-emerging from the hostel yesterday afternoon we walked into brilliant
sunshine and blue skies. That led to us
having to retake some of the photos! It
bodes well for tomorrow’s trip to the border – will we finally get to see those
mountains?
We
did indeed find a nice café for our last meal in Argentina – the usual meat and
chips but this time we got a big plate of salad too. We decided not to go for the wine as we were
enjoying the local Salta lager. Back at
the hostel the intention was to have one final beer but ended up having a
couple. It wasn’t our fault as: a)
people started talking to us and b) it was only 10 pesos for a litre bottle –
that’s less than 2 of your UK pounds!
Obviously we were still up and at’em as we had our bus to the border to
catch.
The
bus departed bang on time and once again Steve had booked us front row seats
upstairs so we had a cracking view. The weather? Well it was still dark when we set off but we
could see stars so the omens were good.
In fact we were blessed with brilliant weather right the way to Tupiza
and our first port of call in Bolivia.
Once the sun rose we could see that we were headed towards a mountain
range. It still wasn’t The Andes but hey
who cares?! By the time we reached Jujuy
(the last major town on the Argentinian side and within 300kms of the border)
we could see mountain range upon mountain range. This is what we came for and of course
brilliant sunshine and clear blue skies help too.
We
travelled through some splendid scenery with the landscape littered with
classic mid-west, cowboy flick style cacti and mad rock formations. The rocks are a multitude of predominantly
pink and green hues with clumps of wispy grasses dotted around. We were travelling alongside a very wide,
flat, almost dry river bed with mountains and valleys in all directions. Hang on – throw red, yellow, grey and brown
onto the rock formations palette please.
If all bus journeys were as amazing as this one people would seriously
question the wisdom of flying. Around
100kms from the border we got our first glimpse of The Andes with snow on the
highest peaks. We also spotted our first
llamas (domesticated) and we’re sure there were flamingos in a distant body of
water. Just what we’d hoped for and then
some.
At
the border town of Al Quiaca we were surprised that climbing a short flight of
steps took our breath away. Now I know
we’ve been very indulgent in recent weeks but we can’t have lost all the
fitness so soon. Ah, that explains it -
the sign tells us we’re at 3443m and considering we climbed up quite quickly on
the bus we’ll need time to acclimatise.
In fact the bus completed its journey just over an hour ahead of
schedule, plus we gained an hour by simply walking over the border. We love walking over borders and this one by
was far and away the calmest we’ve ever encountered. Getting stamped out of Argentina took minutes
and immigration on the Bolivian side was relaxed too. We simply filled out a bog standard arrival /
departure card and chief stamped us into Bolivia for 30 days i.e. no visa and
no expense.
Even
wandering around town on the Bolivian side was hassle free; we’d expected money
changers to pounce on us but in actual fact we had to hunt for the Casas de
Cambio that wasn’t having a siesta! The
bus station was straight up the main street and as luck would have it a Tupiza
bound bus spied us, pulled up and we hopped on.
We’d read that this part of the journey would take about 3 hours but we
didn’t care as we’d gained a couple of hours and knew we’d go through some more
fantastic scenery. In reality the roads
have improved and we reached town in only 2 hours. All-in-all we were checking into La Torres
Hotel http://www.latorretours-tupiza.com/reviews.html 3 hours earlier than we’d planned, in daylight and with time to get our
bearings. La Torres is a great little
hotel right in the centre of a very quiet town.
We splashed out on a room with private facilities and it’s turned out to
be a steal at only US$25 a night including a simple but ample breakfast.
