Bienvenidos en Bolivia

I am not sure what to expect in Bolivia, and yesterday, I was apprehensive for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, Bolivia is high, very high. We climbed from 2500m in Tilcara to 3600 at the border, and now we spend the next 4 days at that height. That brings with it memories of Flo having very bad altitude sickness, mind you that was at 6000m, and me having it three times, in Colorado (4000m), Cusco (4000m), and Llasa ( only 3300m). However, in my case, all those previous cases might have been because I came from sea level by plane.

Both Flo and I separately checked online how to prevent and how to treat, since we have much the same fears. So far, so good, maybe because we acclimatised first. ( Correction: Flo is suffering from a typical altitude headache). Worst case, Uyuni has a hospital.

Secondly, Bolivia is impossible to plan in detail because so little is online. For example, only one agent selling bus tickets in the entire country, and they are relatively expensive. There are some timetables but mistly on facebook, and accuracy is questionable, but these cover a tiny fraction of what's available, and bizarrely only the slowest options, the big buses. Much better are the 8 seater minibuses (locals call them Suribi, which strangely is a type of catfish), that go more or less on demand, when they fill up. If you google suribi, you find fish, not buses. For once, we pay the stupid gringo price, about double, but for that, we have the bus to ourselves, and we just go.

Going back to earlier the border crossing was easy, and ot took for both leaving Argentina ( La Quiaca) and entering Bolivia (Villazon) about 30 mins. We were a bit lucky as behind us the queue quadrupled in size.

One curiosity caught our eye, namely behind the border crossing is a reserved path, not a road, just a tarmacadam path. On it there is a near constant stream of Bolivians on foot pulling carts full of all manner of things in the direction of Bolivia. Food, drinks, alcohol and more. In the direction of Argentina they run back without any cart. Its all official, so it probably means that all those goods are cheaper in Argentina. Looks very odd.

Next step is to find the bus station, not the real one, but rather the repurposed old one. There we very quickly find a a Suribi.

What we didn’t find so easily was a functioning ATM. All three not working. Western Union neither, no system. So we change US$150 of our cash reserve.

We should be in Uyuni by 5pm, much better than the scheduled bus that only left 3 hours later and drives much slower.Read more