Tupiza

Its been a little while since I have updated here, so please a little patience.

Tupiza.

The train trip to Tupiza, and I do enjoy a good train trip, wasn't quite as good as I hoped. We got the expensive seats, not really expensive, its only a few dollars to get the best on offer. This included a meal in the dining/smoking car. It would have been nice if we could have grabbed our meals and headed back to our seats to eat. I sound like I am whinging a bit, don't get me wrong I had a smile from ear to ear the entire ride. The scenery and countryside were unlike anything I had ever seen before, ( with the exception of some parts of SA ) very dry and dusty.

Little Mining town on the way.

The whole area is mining, mostly tin I think and that is what we were riding, not a mine train, but the line. Plenty of llama or vicuna or something that resembles the little blighters, kept whizzing past our windows. It was quite funny, because Jo would get up, move to a better window for some photos and none would appear, as soon as she sat back down we would see more. Up she would get, a little bit more peeved each time. This kept me entertained for ages, but I was suitably angry at the buggers, well just enough to be convincing to Jo. Being a mine line in the middle of Bolivia, mmm lets just say they don't have any plans to put a bullet train on it in the near future and if they do, don't buy me a ticket as a surprise. Very bumpy, very dusty, but a great trip none the less, as I said I had a great time the whole way.

We got into Tupiza at 4am. No problem there we had phoned ahead to a hostel to let them know that we were coming and they were waiting for us, we just went straight to bed. We heard a couple of other guests talking about going for a horse ride that afternoon at breakfast, Jo gave me one of those quizzical looks. I just told her that she better tag along with them if she wanted, because it would be a cold day in hell before she got me on one of those mangy...........

Jo went for a 5 hour ride that afternoon, while I explored the town. Horses aren't really my bag, so to speak. In fact the closest I like to get to horses now days is when I eat a meat pie. The town however was quite a happening little place. Not very big, I had seen just about everything in two hours, but plenty of people everywhere and nice little stalls selling every kind of battery size you could want. The rest of our time here we just took it easy, it is a very wild west kind of place with dust blowing down the main street at dusk and tumbleweeds rolling in after the dust.

Jo´s horse ride, she had the camera that day.

We got a 4am bus to the border. I don't know why but everything seems to happen around this town at 4am. We met a nice Norwegian girl, who had been in Sth America for a while and was doing a loop trip up through Brazil and then down through Peru and Bolivia and back to Argentina, we caught her going back to Argentina. We hadn't booked anything in Salta, our next destination, and she suggested a place for us. She was staying there anyway as she had stayed there before and in fact it was a very nice little hostel, more like a house really. I wasn't sure who were guests ( paying ones ) workers, freeloaders or boyfriend/girlfriends of any of the above. Someone did put up their hand to take our cash though at checkout, so everything worked out ok in the end.

I get a little ahead of myself sometimes. For the bus from Tupiza we had to get up at 3.15am, Jo was ......... well not too happy about this, but at least she could have a sleep on the bus. We were about 50m down the road when we turned up a highway ( please read dirt goat trail ). The bus soon filled up with dust, which couldn't settle on anything for all the jarring, I was relived when we made it to the next town and I could check that all my fillings were still there. The ride did however give you the feeling of making a mad dash for the Bolivian border, being on the wrong side of the law, kind of thing. Not surprisingly, not too far from here, a short horse ride I was told, and I bet an even shorter motorbike ride, is where Butch and Sundance met their match. I half expected a coyote to appear from behind one of the cactus's. Not that I could actually see much through the dust and besides it was 4am. After about two hours we finally made it to tarmac. The dust cleared inside the bus and we could just see the sun coming up over the horizon. The one thing that I can't believe is that Jo managed to sleep on that trip, granted not the best sleep, but sleep she did.

Mining Sth Amearica style.