Left all alone waving goodbye to Marcos and Melba, we both feel quite emotional. Ad comforts me as I feel like a heart-broken teenager after a summer holiday romance with a slightly older, long haired, flip-flop wearing, scooter riding youth that has carried me around pillion and given it to me side saddle a few times, on a blissful ten days in Toremelinos. Aaaah memories. Anyway, back to the present. We are in Uyunni after a fantastic four day tour. We're not quite sure what we are going to do next but decide to spend the night here and then head off to Sucre, the judicial capital of Bolivia.
We check into a hostel and have a wander around, however it soon becomes clear that we are in a real one horse, one whore town (apparently it's her day off) and the thought of staying here for 24 hours is comparable to contemplating sticking sharpened pencils up your nose. So off we head to the bus station and book our tickets for Sucre. QUALITY, COMFORT and SECURITY is the company slogan and after viewing the pictures of the pretty posh bus we pay over our money for the overnight journey. A few hours later we return in good time to embark. The bus is supposed to leave at 7pm and at 6.55 the bus is not here. Across the road another companies bus arrives... very nice...7pm and our bus arrives. Well fuck me, I can't believe the old jalopy that has turned up. It hardly looks as if it will reach the end of the road let alone a 18 hour journey over, apparently, some of the worst roads in South America! I ask the woman if that is really our bus.. yes, she says... are you serious?... yes, she says. Oh I'm fuming...quality, comfort and security.... the bus looks so dilapidated that I'm convinced all my internal organs will be so bruised and battered by the time we reach our destination that they will resemble a pound of strawberries after 2 minutes in a liquidiser. I tell the woman I want my money back. She scowls at me and says no. I insist! She looks away. I call her a thief and demand my money back. But the hard faced mare ain't having none of it. Shouting that I have been robbed I leave the office..... I have had my first argument in Spanish.
We run to the opposite side of the road and catch the bus with the other company. We have lost money, but at least this bus doesn't look like a reject from a breakers yard. 18 hour later we arrive in Sucre. It is a lovely city, immediately apparent is the wealth that is here in comparison to La Paz and everywhere else we have been in Bolivia. Sucre is in the East of the country where there is oil and gas reserves. Unfortunately for the rest of the country the money generated seems to stay in the region and whilst fellow countrymen are living in hovels here the terracotta roofed building are reminiscent of Italy.
We only stay a day in Sucre. After the fantastic time we had out in the Bolivian countryside we are feeling like we need more adventures and don't really feel like being in big cities- as nice as they may be. So now we are thinking of how to get to and booking a tour for the Pantanal, in Brazil. We were planning to enter Brazil via Santa Cruz, Bolivia, by train. The train only leaves 3 times a week and the next departure is two days time. Once in Santa Cruz we start researching more in depth what we are going to do next. Unfortunately we can't find a good recommended tour, that is within our price range. The Pantanal is a huge area within Brazil where wildlife is in abundance. We want a good four day trip where hopefully we will see capybara, anteaters, jaguars, monkeys, anacondas etc. There is so much bad stuff written about the tour companies on various websites that we start to get a bit despondent. To get to the Pantanal is going to take a couple of days. If we go all that way without having anything booked and then can't find a good company it's going to be a huge waste of time. To add to our indecisiveness the weather doesn't look too great there either. Unfortunately we have sorted of painted ourselves in a corner. We are in the far East of Bolivia , we don't really have anywhere else to go unless we go back the same way that we have come. We research alternatives. Finally after much angst and soul searching we decide that we are going to miss out going to the Pantanal. Instead we decide to go to Argentina. However to get there is going to be a real mission.....going through four countries in one day!!
We buy plane tickets to take us the next morning from Santa Cruz, Bolivia to Ascension, Paraguay. We are a little worried when we arrive in Ascension as we have been told by more than one person that you need to have an onward ticket when arriving in Paraguay or they wont let you in the country, which we don't have. We sail through immigration with no problems..sometimes it's best to ignore other peoples advice. We get a taxi to the centre of the city. However it's Sunday and everywhere is closed and the centre is deserted. Our idea is to go to the bus station and get a connection to Cuidad Del Este in the east of the country which borders both Brazil and Argentina. Driving through Ascension we pass some huge mansions that have been left derelict, all around is evidence of a wealthy past. Paraguay is the second poorest country in South America after Bolivia and when we reach the centre, the main square has loads of people sleeping rough under canvass sheets within a small park area. Our taxi driver tells us we need to catch a bus to the station ( we could have got him to take us but we had the distinct feeling that he was ripping us off. These are the things you don't think about too much when preparing your trip, entering new countries you have no idea what the exchange rate is or how much things should cost when you get there; invariably the first contact is with taxi drivers, they know that you are naive and I suspect all try to take the piss if they can - same all over the world I expect). After a 15 minute wait an old chugga bus turns up and takes us to the station. Ascension looks really poor and a hard place to live. There has just been a change of government here and a leftist leaning ex priest has won the presidency from a right wing party that had been in power for 67 years. The elite has been looking after the elite and you can see by the surroundings that Paraguay is desperately in need of some public finance injections.
We nearly miss our bus as we haven't realised that the time has gone forward an hour from that of Bolivia's. However happily ensconced on the the bus we look forward to the second leg of our journey to the border. The journey should take 6 hours, unfortunately after about 2 hours the bus is making a strange noise, after 4 hours the bus breaks down and won't restart. After much tinkering banging, sticking things together with glue and other technical shenanigans, the bus begrudgingly coughs to a start. An hour later and we break down again on the motorway...well the Paraguayan equivalent. The driver looks at us all and shrugs his shoulders.. I think that is the international sign for " I think it's fucked". Its now 6o'clock in the evening and we have been on the go since 4 am. We are about an hour away from the Paraguayan/Brazilian/Argentinian border. Why are things not easy? Another bus pulls up behind us and thankfully lets us all get on.
At the bus station you are supposed to be able to catch an international bus that will take us over the border to Argentina. It's Sunday and everything is closed. Our guide book tells us that we can catch a bus just after Paraguayan customs control. We make our way there, get our exit visas stamped in our passports and look for the bus. There isn't one. To get to Argentina you have to cross a bridge into Brazil first and then carry on to the Argentine border. The guide books are a bit unclear of how we are supposed to do this if there is no bus. We ask some Paraguayan soldiers if we can walk over the bridge to Brazil, they say yes no problem. We later find out that all the guide books tell you not to do this as you are almost certain to be mugged - thankfully it's Sunday and it must be the muggers day off. We cross the bridge and get to Brazilian immigration control. It's all in Portuguese and we don't have a clue. We follow the road around to a check point. It's nearly deserted. An armed soldier at the barrier is on his mobile to a mate, having a good laugh. He asks where we are going and on saying Argentina, just waves us through; no passport stamp, entry visa or nothing. We enter Brazil convinced that we are entering illegally and expecting to be shot in the back or picked up by the police at any minute. We hail a taxi and get him to take us to the Argentine border. It turns out that this is about half an hour away; another thing that the guide book doesn't tell you. All goes smoothly at the border as we enter into our fourth country of the day: Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. What a journey. I wouldn't recommend it, but at least we have got to where we want to be in just one day.
We are now at Puerto Iguazu where tomorrow we are going to see the fantastic waterfalls strung out along the border.
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