Towards civilization

We went from La Paz on a 10 hours busride to Uyuni thursday night - and seeing as most of Bolivias roads are dirt roads and that the country probably has the worst buses in Southamerica, we did not get a lot of sleep.

The only time it would have been nice to have arrived a bit later after a night on a bus, we arrived exactly on time - 5.30 in the morning, dark and freezing cold! We were lucky that the tour agencies opened early and we could get in their offices and warm up a bit while checking out tours to the salt flats. Agreed on a one day tour the same day, and went out to get some breakfast before heading off. Once again again again, I had problems with my stomach - it seems I am just not supposed to feel good for more than a couple of days a time, and it's driving me crazy. I must have taken a trillion pills since I was sick the first time in Southamerica.
Anyways, we drove out in a group of 8 including 4 retired columbians that were very fond of chitchatting with foreigners in spanish - so I got to practice a bit more, which was actually quite nice seeing as we don't really need to speek a lot of spanish when we're just on the road.

The salt flats were absolutely amazing. Ass soon as we stepped out of the car, we were almost blinded by the whiteness of the salt sorrounding us. We saw a hotel made of salt and had a lousy lunch before driving to "Isla de Pescado", an island in the middle of the salt with cactus all over. Took some cool pictures and went back to catch the next night bus, this time to the border.

That bus was the worst bus experience so far. We spend an hour waiting for them to carry the entire contents of a house on top of the bus - beds, chairs, tables... When we finally got in the bus, the seats could not go further than 10cm back, and all around us were local people smoking or getting drunk. After driving an hour or so, more local people got on the bus, and for the next 6 hours there was no room whatsoever for doing anything else than closing your eyes and hoping that we would get to the right place eventually. I woke up in the middle of the night and asked an english guy that was on the bus if he knew what time it was, and his answer was something like "No, but there's a baby sleeping next to you". And yes, there was a baby sleeping on the floor with its mother sitting next to it on the floor as well.

Arrived in the morning to cross the border to Argentina, which equals civilization - at least in Southamerican terms. We were to get a stamp in our passports at the migration office, but the woman there just decided to go out for breakfast, leaving like twenty people waiting for her to come back. After swearing in danish about the crappy bolivian system, and after Alex telling me off for breaking the mood, we got the stamp and crossed the border to get a bus to Salta, another 6 hours.

Crossing the border did lift my mood quite a bit - I was absolutely amazed by the fact that you could actually see nice houses and highways!!!! Woooooow, that was crazy.
Arriving in Salta, we checked in to a hostel and went for a walk to shop for cooking dinner. Walking in the first argentinian city made me so happy - real supermarkets, stores and just a nicer place in general.

Ended up going out with some people from the hostel, since Salta should be a really nice city when it comes to nightlife. We had a great night, and I think that right now Alex is sleeping to get better than he looked this morning. Not that I feel amazing - but it was nice to go out somewhere else than Tequila Bar in Urubamba!

We'll have a couple of more days in Salta before heading off to Iguazu Falls, our next stop and last stop before Rio. Time seems to be running out!