A blessed journey
At 1:00am on Saturday 9th June we took a four hour bus from Salta to Aguas Blancas on the Argentine side of the Bolivian border, we were turfed out of the bus at 5am and told to walk accross the border to Bolivia. Blear eyed and confused we must have looked a bit pathetic not knowing where to go, because a very nice smartly dressed couple put us in there taxi and drove us to the border and baby sat us accross the crossing to Bolivia where the time because an even more ungodly 4am!
Border formalities complete we set about waiting for the seven hour bus which would take us to Tarija, the bus that would not arrive until early afternoon that is. Fortunately our smartly dressed friends took pity on us again and asked if we would like to share their taxi to Tarija, for a total of 100Bolivianos (about 6.50GBP) and taking only three hours – well we umed and ahed, we had been looking forward to that bus?!
Safely esconced in the Taxi and chatting away in pigeon spanish the gentleman asked where we were from and when we said England he suggest in a brad American accent that perhaps it would be better if we spoke English then. Oh how we laughed! Turns out he was the Anglican Bishop for Argentina and he and his companion had been at a convention of Bishops in Salta and were heading home to Cochabamaba. It was an interesting journey, they were ever so nice and regailed us with stories of Bishop kareoke (the Bishop of Argentina used to be in a band you know) as the taxi driver changed the gas cylinders on the car.
Yes, gas cylinders. The cars use natural gas beacause its cheaper but not as powerful, so they also use petrol to keep the engine runnine smoothly and when they need more power. This involves the driver physically stopping, unhooking the fuel line from the engine and reattaching it to the gas cylinder in the boot. The whole process is made all the more strange by the car itself which is right hand drive, with just the steering wheel moved to the left, so the driver spends the whole journey slightly twitching to the right to read the dials, a lot of cricked necks in this country.
Anyway, we eventually arrived in Tarija at about 9:00am, a good 13 hours earlier than expected thanks to our new friends, so we thanksed them profusely and then slept. All day.
Tags: Bolivia, Tarija, Travel
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