Tupiza (May 15, 2006)

We woke up this morning at 6:30, probably the earliest we’ve been up on this trip so far. Our bus was leaving at 7:55 and we wanted to leave the hostel around 7:30. We had arranged to have our breakfast ready for 7:15, but I think Diego was not happy to be getting up so early and was a little slow-moving. We had to eat very quickly, and brought some of the breads with us (breakfast in Argentina is different kinds of bread with jam and butter, and tea or coffee). The bus was a little bit late, and wasn’t as nice as the other buses we had been on. It didn’t have a bathroom on it, so we both really had to go when we reached La Quiaca. The scenery on the way was beautiful, and I took a few pictures from the bus window.

We reached La Quiaca around 11:30 and made our way on foot for the border, approximately one kilometre. As we approached, we saw a big stream of people carrying big heavy loads in a line across the border into Bolivia, and a stream of them coming back across the other way empty handed. I remembered reading about how the transport companies hire locals to manually carry the loads across the border instead of paying the fees for having their trucks cross the borders. It was quite a sight to see. Many of the people carrying these loads looked like they were over seventy years old! All of a sudden we didn’t feel so bad carrying the loads that we had.

Crossing the border was quick and easy. We asked someone to point us in the right direction and just walked into the Argentinean customs, where they put exit stamps in our passports, then walked to the Bolivian immigration office where we filled out a form that nobody even looked at, got stamped, and were on our way. Next stop was getting some travellers cheques cashed at one cambio (there are many of them on the main street after crossing over the border), but they only gave us US dollars, so we went to a different cambio and had this changed into bolivanos. We continued down the street, hoping to find a taxi to take us to the train station. Someone at the posada in Tilcara had told us to take the trains in Bolivia instead of the buses if we could. There is only a train leaving Villazon on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, and lucky for us today was Monday. We finally came across a taxi stand and arrived at the train station shortly before the ticket window was closing for lunch. We bought two tickets in executive class, since we figured we’d take the easy route for today. There were already many travellers waiting in the lounge (most of them Israelis that we had seen on the bus from Iguazu to Salta). There is nothing in the area of the train station as far as restaurants or shops, so we bought some oranges from a stall and plopped ourselves down to wait three hours until the train left. Several people arrived after the ticket window had closed and were worried that the train might be full (Lincoln & I couldn’t get seats beside each other), so we were happy that we had arrived before the ticket window closed. In the end, I think most people got on the train, but in the cattle class, and some people could only get as far as Tupiza because further on the tickets were all sold. Some people wanted to go all the way to Uyuni, so they were upset that they had to stay the night in Tupiza, and there was no train again until Wednesday.

There was more beautiful scenery to be had during the train ride through Bolivia. The movie shown on the train was Red Dragon, and then a bunch of hilarious videos from the 80’s. On the train were three guys who were doing a motorcycle tour from Buenos Aires to Cuzco. For some reason, they decided to put their motorbikes on the train for the ride to Oruro and were going to continue riding from there.

We arrived in Tupiza around 6:30 and went through the chaos to get our backpacks off the luggage car. We ended up staying at Hotel Mitru for 90 bolivanos (that’s around $11). We promptly went to a tour agency to try and book something for tomorrow, and booked a ½ day jeep tour to see some of the sights in the area. There was already four people booked on this tour, so we were able to get on it for a cheaper price than the others (supposedly). There was another tour called the “Triathlon” that includes biking, horseback riding, and jeep tour that looked like fun, but seeing as how we’re not totally cured of our colds yet, and I have a bit of a headache possibly from the altitude, we decided against any physical activity for tomorrow. The tour we are doing has an option to ride bikes downhill at the end of the day, so we’ll probably do that. We also asked about the Salar de Uyuni tours, and it looks like we won’t have a problem booking one for Wednesday, so we were happy about that.

After getting the tour settled, we found a restaurant for dinner then went back to the hostel and were in bed by 9:00! There was a one-hour time change when we crossed the border, so it was really 10:00 to us.