La Quiaca- Adios, Argentina!

From Salta we took an 8-ish hour bus to La Quiaca, the last stop before Bolivia. There´s really not much to do there, it was just easier for us to stay one night there and worry about crossing the border the next morning. La Quiaca is at about 12,000 feet and arriving there is when we first felt the effects of the change in altitude. We had been slowly getting higher and higher as we passed through Salta and Jujuy, but when we walked through La Quiaca we were quickly out of breath. The air felt thinner and it was harder to take a deep breath. So we just walked slowly and had no problems. It made me want to bake a cake just so I could use the high altitude recipe! That night we had our last Argentine steak. :(
The Bolivian border is a little less than a mile from town and there´s no bus that takes you there, so we just walked the next morning. The town right across the border is Villazón, Bolivia. We had to be at the train station in Villazón at 3:30pm to catch our train to Uyuni. Good thing we gave ourselves plenty of time to get across the border because it ended up being a big mess.
Our exit stamp from Argentina was no problem, but after waiting in a long line we finally got up to the window for our entry stamp into Bolivia and were told it would be US $135 each to enter. Now, if we had been expecting to pay to enter Bolivia, this wouldn´t have been such a mess. But everything we had read before leaving the states said that it would be free, so we weren´t sure what to do. No one around us was paying, but we were the only Americans and they said the fee was just for us. Thanks. So, naturally we didn´t believe the guy at the window and tried to find out for sure. We walked back to the Argentina side and asked some police officers what the fee should be and they told us it should be free even for North Americans. They then told us to walk into Villazón without an entry stamp and go to the Argentine Consulate and they could help us.
So we hiked the 10 blocks or so with all of our stuff and found the Consulate. It ended up being a bit of a joke in there. At first they told us that the person who could help us would be back in 15 min. and then it turned into ¨they´re not here and we don´t know when they´ll be back.¨ Hmmm. Well, while I waited in the Consulate, Seth walked to a phone and called the US Embassy in Bolivia. First he tried the one in La Paz. No answer. Then he tried the other one in Santa Cruz. He finally talked to someone and sadly, it was true that the fee is only for Americans and it has been in place for about a year.
Now we had to make the decision if we still wanted to go through Bolivia since that was a lot of money we weren´t expecting to pay. If we wanted to go around, we could go back into Chile and connect directly with Peru. But there were several things we were really looking forward to in Bolivia, one of them being the salt flats in Uyuni. So we decided to pay the money. At least now we knew for sure that the fee was real, and our money wasn´t just going into someone´s pocket. So we walked back down to the border and had to humbly walk back to the same guy at the same window and apologize for not believing him. We also found out that they didn´t accept cards and we didn´t have that much cash on us. So finding the cash was part 2 of the fiasco.
We walked to the only ATM in Villazon and it was, of course, out of cash. That would have been too easy. So we had to cross back into Argentina to find another ATM. We had to take a taxi because it was a really long walk and by now we were getting a little too close to our 3:30 train deadline. (This train only leaves from Villazón twice a week so we really couldn´t afford to miss it) Two ATMs and a long line later, we finally had the money. The next issue was that we had to change the Argentine pesos that we had just withdrawn into US dollars. Because of some law, there are no change houses on the Argentine side and so we had to walk all the way back across the border into Villazón to change the money. Once we finally had all the money changed we went back to our friend at the window and got our entry stamp and visa. Thank goodness that was over. But then again, a trip to South America wouldn´t be complete without adventures like this!
We still had to walk about 12 blocks to get to the train station, but we were pretty sure that we were good on time now. We got to the station and bought our tickets and even had time to eat lunch before our train left. It was a nice change of pace to take a train instead of the buses we have gotten so used to. It was a nice train ride and we were even served dinner in a dining car. We got to Uyuni at 12:30am.  More about Uyuni in the next post!

outside our hostel in La Quiaca

This is the street that takes you from La Quiaca to the border. We became very familiar with it.

This is the border with Bolivia. A little bridge over a tiny, dirty river. There was actually a family of pigs walking around the river eating the garbage.

our train to Uyuni