Crossing the Bolivian border

There are no words to describe our journey from Argentina to Bolivia! We flew from Buenos Aires to Jujuy (correct pronounciation of the name of the city is Huhuy, which we thought was really funny). Our first real "accident" happened in this city, we were walking around in the city with our heavy backpacks on when Lili stumpled in the uneven pavement and fell to the ground with her backpack still on. She couldn't even manage to get up by herself and four Argentinians ran to help her and pulled her up. At that point Katja was very concerned that the helpful Argentinians would steal Lili's purse :)

Our plan was to take a night bus from Jujuy to La Quiaca and cross the border there. We had been informed that the bus would take about seven hours and that we would arrive at La Quiaca at around 7 am. Well the bus was a bit early and we arrived there already at 5 am. The "city" was dead! All hotels and hostels were closed and it was freezing cold at the altitude of 3442 meters above sea level! Our plan B was to walk to the border and take an early train to Tupiza. Well the plan B didn't work out that well either. The border was closed and didn't open until 7.30 am. We spent our time there talking to the border security guy who informed us that there are no trains to Tupiza from Villazon (we later found out that this was not true). Apparently something had broken or fallen and he hadn't seen the trains since then. :) This same guy also told us that we can just cross the border without the immigration procedures, but we really wanted our exit and entry stamps to avoid future problems.



Freezing at the border at 6 am looking like homeless people

 We finally crossed the border to Villazon at 7.30 am. From there (still freezing our asses off) we took the first ride we saw to Tupiza. Our ride was a local family's minivan and we drove the three hour journey to Tupiza with the mum sitting in the front seat, the son driving and the grandmum sitting behind us in the backseat. The roads were incredibly interesting and bumpy, we drove on sand, rocks, asphalt and occasionally in the ditch. The grandmum in the backseat was really willing to chat with us and beacause of our mediocre spanish skills she asked us what languages we speak. When we told her that we speak four languages she just concluded that she doesn't speak finnish or swedish :) When Lili told the old lady that Katja doesn't speak spanish she just blurted "Oh  but she still understands". This was not the first time this happened, in Buenos Aires a man in a park assumed the same thing after our small talk with him.

We are now in Peru but we will post more stories about Bolivia in the near future :)