We arrived in Copacabana from La Paz after a 3 hour bus ride and trudged up the hill to our preferred hotel, without a booking. They were fully booked but advised us to turn up anyway and luckily a non-confirmed booking meant we got the room! It was a great place to hang out and, after our recent escapades elsewhere in Bolivia, the perfect place to relax for a few days. So this post will be short!
Poor old La Paz didn’t really stand much of a chance with us. We wanted to go there… but we really wanted to see everything else we wanted in Bolivia before we got there. Our disappointment at our enforced shortened trip in Bolivia and our weekend arrival didn’t exactly make it easy for us to like.
That said, our first impression of La Paz was incredible. We arrived as the sun was rising over the many terraces of the city. La Paz lies entirely in a valley so makes a for a spectacular view, particularly as the sun rises. Unfortunately once we got off the bus we couldn’t get a room at the hostel we wanted to and the one we ended up staying at was a bit weird. To get to our room we had to walk through one of the dorms and the walls to our room were glass with curtains that didn’t fully cover them. Also, we could hear everything from the dorm. Still…. it was a bed and there was a shower and given the ordeal of the past few days we were relatively happy.
Our 7 hour bus ride to La Quiaca on the Argentine border was reasonably comfortable and we arrived at 7.30am. It was freezing cold but we were treated to a spectacular sunrise. We walked with two other travellers, Antoine (French) and Johanna (German) – who we met at the bus station the night before in Salta – to the border which was about 1km from the bus station. We were pretty short of breath during the walk as we’d climbed about 2km in altitude during the bus journey. After getting our exit stamps from the Argentine immigration office we walked across the bridge into Bolivia. After a small queue and some simple checkpoint formalites we headed into the Bolivian town of Villazón. It was the first time I’d ever crossed a border on foot.
The bus journey to Salta was the only one so far that we’ve done during the day. It was pretty interesting to actually be able to see the countryside, and we were rewarded with giant cacti and even a little tornado that was sweeping through the dust.
We didn’t have anywhere to stay when we arrived, so we walked into town, looked at a few places and eventually decided upon Residencial Elena. It’s in a neocolonial building just a couple of blocks south of the plaza and is run by a really lovely Spanish family. Once we were settled in we headed up to the impressive Plaza 9 de Julio to locate the Museo de Arquelogía de Alta Montaña (MAAM) which houses the truly amazing mummified bodies of the Incan children found on Llullaillaco in 1999 (although only one is on display at any given time). Even though we had been told how incredible the mummies are (thanks Janna), nothing could have really prepared us for just how life-like they are. We also popped into the Catedral to try and take some photos, but it was filled with children, I’ve never actually seen a full church before, let alone a massive cathedral, it was quite an impressive sight! Back at the B&B that evening we met Laliv and Yossi in front of the fire who are travelling in the opposite direction to us. We ended up spending hours talking about travel, films and even a little bit of biology and ended up skipping dinner and going to bed late.
Our last day-and-a-half was spent in Tucumán. Well, it was actually a couple of days, but a lack of sleep on the overnight bus from Córdoba (because of a lying ticket agent’s description of the seat) meant that I crashed out as soon as we got to our room and we lost half a day before we could get out and about to get acquainted with the city.
The fact that it was where Argentina’s independance was declared not only makes it a very important city in Argentina, but also determined much of the sightseeing we’d do during our time there. The most signifigant being the Casa de la Independencia and the cathedral. We also noted during our first stroll through the city that the siesta here was more obvious than any of the other cities we’d visited previously. All of the shops closed and the streets were deserted for a few hours. But considering that the suburbs are only 8 blocks away from the city’s main square – yet another Plaza Independencia – everyone must’ve gone home to sleep.
We didn’t have flat beds on the bus ride from Mendoza, so we were pretty tired when we arrived in Córdoba. We had to wait in the common room at the hostel for a few hours until the room was available.Then we crashed for a bit and headed into town to see what was going on. Our hostel was in a great location just a couple of blocks from the truly beautiful Plaza General San Martin. It was early evening when we went out and we were amazed at how beautiful the central part of the city is. The buildings are beautifully lit and restored, we just walked and gawked for quite a while. Most things are closed on Mondays in Argentina and there are very few people about, so we decided to see a movie. Let’s just say that it was called ‘Encuentro Explosivo’ then I don’t have to embarrass us by telling you what it was.
The next day we took in some of the sights. Again we were a little thwarted by closings during the middle of the day (namely the supposedly great English tour of the university which we tried to visit three times, on the final time it was open, but they weren’t running the last tour of the day, the one we had arrived for), but we managed to see the Cordóba Cabildo and the very sobering Museo de la Memoria. We certainly didn’t know much of the history of Argentina when we arrived, but found out shortly after arriving in Buenos Aires that during the late 70s and early 80s the government ‘disappeared’ a startling number of people who didn’t support it. Many of the people who were taken were frighteningly young.
