The Attraction of Bolivia...

...someone's mum told me, is that it is close to Argentina.

Having finally made it to Argentina I can now safely say "Word, Mother of jz, word"

Yes, I found a country which made me feel uncomfortably like the spolied, obsessed with flat paved roads and foods-that-are-not-fried-chicken, whiny, bourgeois white girl that I am.

Bolivia was... bolivia was... Bolivia was mainly just "there". It had some mountains, sort of like Peru, it had a capital that was kind of like Bogotá but uglier and, when we first arrived, in total lockdown for the 1st of May. It had a shitload of icecreameries which Carly found joyous and which I appreciated since they helped to pass the time.

The two of us strayed from the typical gringo route of seeing Bolivia. Instead of heading for the salt fields and taking photos of each other in glittering whiteness, we headed towards Paraguay to try to find some warmth, perhaps some enormous cocktails, perhaps some rivers... mainly just some damn warmth though since I had been denied any in Peru and was totally fed up with my meagre number of warm clothes and my dependence on woollen jumpers. (Yes! I know! Woolly jumpers! And I'm not even in New Zealand!)

So from La Paz we headed to Cochabamba, a town I was informed was integral to the movie Scarface, once I had reached it and which I could only assume was so because the writers of said film had been high on the subject matter and had just thrown a dart at a map of Bolivia and gotten the giggles when they landed on that one. So yes, Cochabamba was warmer than, say, La Paz. And it was the town from which the dude from Scarface was from. And it had a really really really massive statute of Jesus on one of its hills that you could reach by taking a teleferica which takes my teleferica riding tally up to three (3). Cochabamba also had... a market which sold... all the shit you would usually find at a market. It also had cheap internet. And we saw Spiderman 3 there so I can also tell you that Cochabamba had a cinema. (Actually, it had several but we picked the darkets and most rundown one because it was nearest to our hostal. It had a massive screen but really old seats and they seemed to save energy by refusing to turn on the foyer lights on if a)a film was screening b)if it was between film screenings c)you needed to go to the toilet).

After becoming thoroughly depressed and ringing people back home we got out of Cochabamba and headed to the apparently largest city in Bolivia, Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz was even warmer than Cochabamba (yay!) and we saw a toucan chilling in a hostal's communal garden on our first day there. I also saw: a family of three that employed two nannies and back to back episodes of Pimp My Ride. We also found a cool bar which was attached to some LA Mama-esque theater or some shit. It was interesting to note that "artistic" bars are the same all over the world, complete with over-priced drinks, uppity waiters (faux-crying waitor from Cuba, I will never miss you), slightly drunk people talking loudly about the Truth of their Vision and fucking awesome toilets (so massive! So clean! So enowed with sweet smelling soap, just like the Malthouse. Kind of.).

However, lured by the promise of a train to the boarder, Carly and I decided it was time to go back to the crazy bimodial station and try to get closer to Argentina. Plus we'd tried on all the jeans we liked in town and they were either too small or made in Argentina.

Unfortunately the train wasnt running so we decided to splurge on a cama bus all the way to the Argentinian town of Salta, 20 hours away.

Some important questions I have learnt to ask since that decision:
1)Is it one bus direct to [town]?
2)Is it cama all the way?
3)How long is it expected to take?

If I had asked any of those questions I might've been surprised to learn that the answer was
1)No - it is a series of whichever buses will be running whenever you get to bus terminals (disperate) throughout Argentina
2)No - see above. Also, some shitty buses, missing windows and sections of seats, will be used to ferry you and your fellow passengers through burning road blocks and massive prickly branches that will be strewn on Argentinian roads for no reason that will ever be explained to you
3)That depends on whether you count the amount of time it takes to get off a bus on the hour, every hour, once in Argentina to have your bags and every other bag on the bus searched by police and have them go through your passport and peer suspiciously at a stamp that was placed within it mere hours before.

When we actually arrived in Salta (a mere 20 hours, as predicted, later) both of us refused to believe we had actually made it. We asked not only the bus driver but the guy unloading our bags and anyone else we could grab if we really, truly, were, RIGHT NOW, in Salta (yes, this is Salta. Yes. Right here. This place. Now).

And then we went out to dinner and enjoyed a complimentary entree of small dishes the kitchen had made for the sheer hell of it and the satisfaction of knowing that a quater of a bottle of wine was cheaper than a bottle of water.

Ah Bolivia. Close to Argentina indeed