Lest you think that our days are filled with visiting one beautiful site or church or

Mike and an Andean Eagle 

museum after another let me tell you about our recent days. We had one logistics glitch after another and could not seem to make a correct decision. When things don’t go right it always seems to cost money, time and patience.

It all started with the twenty-four hour bus ride from Salta to Puerto Iguazu. Iguazu Falls is a major site in Argentina and a must see (despite the long bus ride). From Puerto Iguazu we planned to go the few miles across the boarder into Brazil to continue our travels. On the day we planned to purchase our visas for Brazil we discovered that this is a terrible time to go to Brazil without accommodation reservations because of Carnaval. Everything is sold out and/or extremely expensive. We decided that we did not want to fight the crowds and would go to Bolivia instead. The problem is that the Bolivian border crossing is north of Salta (where we had just come from).

To avoid the 24 hour bus ride, we decided to fly from Iguazu Falls back to Salta. On-line, I accidentally bought first class tickets which were expensive (although we spent too much, first-class was really nice). When we got to Salta we went directly to the bus station to buy a night bus ticket for Bolivia. I didn’t have enough pesos for the tickets so we had to hurry (before the bus was sold out) to the ATM. The ATM at the bus station would not accept our ATM card so we had to take a taxi to the bank and back. We got the tickets but the bus didn’t leave until 10:30 so we hung around waiting for about six hours. When we went to get on the bus they wouldn’t let us on because we didn’t have a Bolivian visa. We had read and were told by the lady selling the bus tickets that we could get the visa at the border. But the bus driver said no, not on the overnight bus. We were so cross and tired but we got our bags back off the bus and a refund from the bus company. All of this is extra complicated because our Spanish is so poor.

We spent the weekend in Salta because of course it was Friday and the Bolivian Consulate was closed until Monday. On Monday morning we got up and were at the Bolivian Consulate to get our visa at 9:00 when they open… they didn’t open. We sat on the step for awhile thinking maybe they are late but a local came along to tell us that Monday and Tuesday are holidays so offices are closed.

Taking a new tact, we decided to take a bus seven hours to the border and take our chance on getting the visa there. So after a seven hour ride turned into 10 hours we slept in the border town in hopes of getting the visas the next day. We arrived at the border at 8:30 and were pleasantly surprised that there was no line. That was not the only surprise, as we discovered that the visa price had increased from $260 to $320. We only had $260 in cash so while Mike watched the bags I boldly walked into Bolivia (no visa) to the money changing store to change our Argentine Pesos for US dollars. Back at the immigration window the official analyzed each bill (counterfeiting is a big problem in Bolivia) and rejected several of our bills because they had ink on them or a rip or a staple hole. It took me three trips across the border to the money changing store (by the third time, the guys in the store were laughing at me) to finally get bills that were acceptable. We filled out a form and finally had our visas. Bolivia here we come.