We left the hostel in Quiaca at around 9am. I must say that the town did look a bit friendlier in the day light. We got a few things from the pharmacy, some petrol and moved on to the border crossing. The crossing looked a bit nuts as people kept crossing by foot, donkeys, cars, busses and I have no idea how they manage to control this flow of people.
Our side of the crossing was relatively calm and we hardly had to wait. Unfortunately an unpleasant surprise was waiting for me. Turned out that Russians need a visa for Bolivia… I got so relaxed with no visa needed for any countries we visited before…. Oh well, you live and you learn. But the issue was that I did check all visa requirements for South America and I couldn’t remember having to pay for the Bolivian visa. So, obviously I put a bit of a fight when the guy asked me to pay 50 USD. After a few minutes of discussion he managed to tell me that the visa is free of charge in the embassy and if I want I can go back into Quiaca and get it, I could. The embassy was really close to the crossing and Ricardo kindly offered to drive me, but unfortunately the visa officer failed to share some important bit of information; it was a public holiday today in Argentina and the whole venture was a waste of time. How funny how the visa guy failed to give me this information. Oh well… We got back to the border, I paid my dumb fee and off we were into Bolivia. I have to mention again how lucky we were to meet Ricardo, as we didn’t have any bolivianos and would have had major issues paying for the visa if it wasn’t for him lending us some money…
As soon as we crossed the border I had a feeling that we entered a huge market. They sold everything there from electronics to fresh fruits and veg. We were advised not to stop in the border town and so we continued on to Tupiza. On the road we were stopped a couple of times by what looked like a DIY toll and had to pay various sums to the people in control. It was never much though, 5-10 bolivianos (0.5-1.00 EUR). The road to Tupiza was surprisingly good, paved all the way and easy to navigate. We got to Tupiza in about an hour. There we had to run a few errands: food, money and directions to Uyuni. The town of Tupiza looked really friendly and surprisingly European, very clean and bright. We got money without any problems, despite the worries we had. –finding food was easy as well. We settled for a rather touristy place, not willing to risk it with local places on the first day. The restaurant served Italian food and delicious fruit cocktails. Even the tourist place was really cheap we thought, comparing to Argentinian prices.
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During our lunch we spoke with Ricardo regarding the plans for the journey, it looked like his plans were very similar to ours with the only difference being time. At this point we really didn’t mind traveling with him all the way, as it was fun for both parties. We shared our thoughts with Ricardo and he said that we are welcome to travel with him all the way to La Paz!
From now on our approximate rout was: Tupiza-Uyuni-Potosi-Sucre-Cochabamba-Samaipata-Parque Nacional ToroToro-La Paz. After La Paz we wanted to take a trip to the jungle and Ricardo was planning to explore the shores of Lake Titicaca.
With this in mind we started our journey to Uyuni and its famous salar (salt plains). On the next toll point Ricardo picked up some water and also some drink which looked dangerously green, since then we called it Plutonium. ;) Just some 5 km into the rout the road turned for the bad, unpaved and really not good, extremely windy but just as well amazingly beautiful. The scenery was changing every minute, from strange rock formation to idyllic villages. After one of the turns, we saw three people doing the same rout by push bikes. How crazy was that, the road was exhausting even by car while going up to about 4200 m! Fair play to them!
We were driving for about three hours when we reached the town of Atocha which marked a halfway milestone of our journey to Uyuni. The town wasn’t in any way spectacular, so we quickly got a few sweets for the road and continued. What was quite interesting is the train station, it was huge, with possibly ten tracks or more, quite unusual for a place of that size and that high up. It must have been used heavily in the earlier days.
We drove on. The road seemed endless, turning after turning and constant shaking. All part of the fun, we were in Bolivia after all. A few hours passed and it started to get dark. As we were approaching Uyuni the road improved, at least it was straight now and we happily increased the speed. I was trying to look for a hostel in our guide book when suddenly we went flying, not for long, but still. As the guys told me afterwards the road suddenly finished and dropped into the river, how great is that!!!Luckily I didn’t see the end of the road and therefore didn’t get scared ;) All was good, wheels in place and we could continue. We arrived in Uyuni at around 10pm. I can’t say that the place was nice, because it wasn’t ;) very dull structures which seemed unfinished. Later we realized that this is the Bolivian new style. We stop on the road to check the map and immediately some shady guy tried to open the car door. Really strange! We safely found the hostel, which wasn’t amazing or cosy, but had all we needed, hot water shower and bed. After settling in we ventured to look for some food and relatively easy found the main street with many eateries. We had a good meal and not a watery beer called Potosina, never again. When we left the restaurant the Argentinian time showed 11:30pm and so we decided for an early start next day. A minute later we saw a street clock which showed 1:30am to our big surprise, funnily enough it didn’t occur to any of us that the time should be one hour less if anything ;) Haha, the clock was wrong of course and next day we were up by 7 am and ready for adventures.
