Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
15/5 birthday tupiza
The day starts with a bus from 00:30 to 07:30 to cross the boarder into Bolivia. We arrive a little groggy and a little early than planned into the boarder town in Argentina. At this hour in this sleepy village its freezing cold both inside and outside the terminal. We rug-up and walk down the road following the wiki-travel directions. Sarah's wearing most of her clothes and I've wrapped a blanket around my head, as seen in the photo. We arrive before the rush and line up. Getting to the window I start to panic as my passport is not in the wallet... Or my small bag. We both calmly jump out of the line and search my things, keeping calm but with the fear building. This is as far away from the embassy in BA as we could possibly be! Finally finding my passport, the boarder was a breeze. We waltz into Bolivia and up the street towards the main square.
Straight away we are hit by the differences between Argentina and Bolivia, the difference a boarder can make, a small stream. The most obvious difference is all the colourful patterns and fabrics in the stores and and being worn by the locals.
We book a bus ticket to Tupiza, a whole £1 for the bus. A few hours later and too much time around some stupid young US girls (we have had the obvious or repetitive questions for hours), we arrive in a very high nice looking town, the first over 3000m. Will we get altitude sickness???
We head to hostel Los Serenas on the other side of the river and to a nice owner. He shows us an amazing room and starts pushing his tours on us, all on a sleepy hungry couple. Before getting breakfast/lunch, I opened the cards from mum and dad and from gran. Thank you so much, it will help pay for my Bolivian salt flats tour. It was great having some birthday messages from home.
We head out for brunch and our first Bolivian meal.... Or rather meal in Bolivia, eggs, bread, great jam, bacon/ham, fresh juice and coffee/tea. We order differently but we receive the same meal, just cut up more. For less than $3 we were not about to complain. We headed back to the hostel via tour agencies but they all seem to offer the same. We decide to relax as we were both feeling a little odd, it could be sleeping on a bus and not getting much sleep, new food or the high altitude. It's weird getting out of breath so easily. we research tour operators online from the comfort of the room and I open my present from Sarah, warm llama socks.
On our way back out to investigate tour companies we meet a French couple in the courtyard area. The owner runs out and explains to us that they are booked on the tour from our hostel the next day. If we were to book then all four of us go, if not they may or may not go. After a brief chat we see they are really nice and funny people. We start to walk down towards town with our tour oporators questions in hand and realise there is a high chance we won't get anyone nicer than them, so we turn around and book with the hostel.
s***, we are leaving tomorrow, we need to get lots of money to pay for the tour and buy some sunglasses for myself after I left them on the bus in Argentina, just to name a few jobs. A walk to town, nice local market and lots of ATMs later, we are set.
We accept our last hot showers for a while and have a tired look for dinner at a place called the Alamo. I got a local meal of chips with onion, peppers, sausage, beef, and more, all piled on top of each other. Interesting to say the least. Sarah ate a fejita rice dish. The other interesting part was the 80's music and film clips, played in 30 seconds selections. All over the walls were old movie posters from the 50's up. Crazy lights and a crazy door. We walked home and crashed around 9, a very different birthday that was very action packed and tiring (altitude makes things a little more interesting). I think this may be my only Bolivian birthday!!
- comments