Hola todos! After the brief stay in Uyuni we carried on to Argentina as planned the next day. As mentioned it was another early start to get the bus to the border town of Villazon to cross into Argentina.
I had originally planned to get up at 0500 but was up since 0330 as someone left a light on outside my room that I turned off when I went to bed and it was shining through the thin curtains on the glass window. Go outside turn it off then nod back to sleep and the alarm goes. Up we get, shower up etc then a short walk over to the station at 0530. The 0600 bus is already there and soon drive gets up and lets everyone on. We are rolling out bang on time happy days.
The bus ride down to Villazon is quite easy going. We are on a cama bus so got a sort of bed like seat and lots of legroom, also we end up making good time arriving at Villazon just after 1200 nearly 1.5 hours ahead of schedule.
Next it’s Frontera time and having read online this one can sometimes be a bit of a circus with people trying to sell you fake tours across the border but getting out it was not like that at all, very quiet actually. I walk out and grab a taxi to the border to save a half hour hike in the sun. We soon arrive and I go into Bolivian exit immigration, I am soon stamped, given my piece of paper and sent over the bridge to the Argentinian side. On the Argentina side it was a very short queue and they asked me where I was staying, I gave them the address of the hostel in Humahuaca and they give me back my passport and send me on my way – turns out they don’t stamp you in Argentina double checking with them. All in all took about 5 minutes to get through both sides of border control.
It’s a 15 minute walk into La Quiaca town for the connecting bus and after a brief visit to the ATM I’m soon at the station and the bus boy there greets me in English “where you going amigo?” “Humahuaca” “bus there goes in 10 mins grab your ticket and get on” I do just that, get on and we’re soon on way.
The day had clearly been going too well up to this point as once we are out of town this bus is going painfully slow crawling along at 20 mph, maybe 25 if we’re going slightly downhill, though it’s mostly flatlands as we’re still on the Altiplano here. From what it sounded like the turbo had gone on this bus.
After several hours of crawling along we eventually stop and they put us all on a different bus and we’re back on way for about 10 min utes to get pulled into to the Gendamarie checkpoint where they come on and check everyone’s passports etc. that is quick but they end up chatting to drive for half an hour about idk what then let us go. Eventually we reach Humahuaca about 2 hours late around 17:30.
Its a big old stair climb up to the hostel but get there, check in go grab a shower etc then have a wander about Humahuaca, which is quite a nice little town actually and eventually grab dinner at a place where there’s some love music then have an early one about half 10 being knackered from this Journey.
Tomorrow we push on to Salta.
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