New Year greetings from the biggest swimming pool in the southern hemisphere...
So that was Bolivia. For now anyway.

Quick flashback here.
Some time ago in a slightly squalid flat on Lothian Road in Edinburgh, two blokes are watching some pre-packaged tourism program on television. You know, one of those ones with that bloke from Monty Python on it. I can't remember which one it was but there he was on a train heading through Boliva to La Paz on the most rickety looking rail contraption in the world. Llamas were being herded off the track, coca tea was being fed to the toursits on board to stave off the altitude sickness and something somewhere in this situation caused a flicker of inspiration to spark off in the two blokes lounging on unmade beds before the glowing televsision set.
They turn to each other.
"Lets go to Bolivia." they say.

Well they did. And that's all folks. Just in case anyone was wondering, Bolivia rocks. I want to go back.

Still. Onwards and Southwards. Onto Argentina.
Thanks to our bonus outing of horse-riding in Bolivia, we only had about two nights to spend in Argentina, both in a pleasant campsite in Salta, and home to the biggest swimming pool in the southern hemisphere.
Three things you should know. One of the nights would be New Year's Eve. The weather was absolutely roasting, burning the skin off your kneck by just sitting still for thirty seconds. Finally, the swimming pool was empty.
We arrived, we put our tents up, we sweated and we looking with yearning at the glowing white bricks of the vast pool layed out before us. This wasn't really what we wanted to see.
Having got into the campsite a little late, and having to chuck out most of the food in the bus before crossing the Argentinian border, we were given a paltry sum to find our own meal rather than cooking it ourselves as would normally happen while camping. Being thrifty sorts, a bunch of us decided to find the local supermarket instead and spend the cash on bread, cheese, ham, olives, wine, more wine and other goodies. The result was a rather splendid and very economical meal, eaten on bird-crap covered benches in near total darkness. I'm not complaining, it was great. And no, we didn't eat anything directly off the benches, just in case anyone was going to ask.
The following day, we set off into town to check out the sights.
Salta is a very pleasant, sunny place, with a large town square and plenty of pavement cafes which occupied our attention for most of the day. It's very relaxing sitting down in an unfamiliar town drinking beers as they are brought to you, chatting with friends and people watching.
We didn't stay there all day of course, we moved from pavement cafe to pavement cafe around the square and had a great time.

That evening, a sangria party was being laid on by the truck to celebrate the change from one year to the next. We stocked up on our own beverages as well just in case (and for me, to avoid the sangria full stop, something I almost achieved. The party started off near the tents with a steak supper (Hell, we were in Argentina after all) and the sound system from the truck pumping out bad music with panache. Eventually, a group of us, in a move of stunning unsociability decided that we wanted to sit in the very deepest point of the swimming pool, and so did so. Here, the music was slightly less objectionable, the stars were out in all their southern hemisphere glory and everyone was getting cheerfully inebriated in some sort of peace.
We all had plans to head back before new year hit in earnest, when a small envoy from the campsite arrived to reprimand us for our unsociable habits. Just as we were about to head back, head in hands, the rest of the group arrived in force to celebrate new year at the deepest point of the pool with us. And as the fireworks started going off in all directions it seemed like the best damn idea in the world.

A few days earlier we had been given a choice of our actions on leaving Salta. Either we could leave at six o'clock in the morning (following New Years Eve) and arrive after a gruelling truck journey over the Chillian border to San Pedro de Atacama, or we could leave at ten and free camp part way along the journey. I was keen on the later given that those of us leaving in Santiago wouldn't have a chance to free camp at all on the trip (that is, camping in the middle of nowhere with no facilities to speak of), but the vote went the other way by some majority and at pretty much six on the dot, Ryan (the tour leader, remember) was shaking our tents desperately yelling "Come on you bastards, you voted for this!"
Groggily, damply, we arrose to the new year and rolled up our tents, damp from the previous nights rain and struggled into the truck.
Not a fun day, all told. Most of this was spent being hungover, watching others who were hungover and struggling through the Chillian border crossing which proved to be the most testing and beaurocratic which we had yet encountered. Apparently there was a story to this, a previous Tucan truck had become impatient with the sheer pettiness of the border guards and had started a row. Since then, Tucan had not been the crossing guards' favourite big yellow busses and generally give them a hard time.
We were all as patient and as docile as a hoard of people whose heads would prefer to explode than cause any officials angst could be. We shuffled in and out of the imigration offices (plural) and patiently displayed our bags before them, looking red eyed and suffering.
The worst of it was that there was a four hour no mans land between the Argentinian border and the Chillian one, and the Chillian border closed at eight o'clock, so haste was required. When we got there, an official in dark glasses barked orders for us to line up our rucksacks for inspection then carefully ignored us for about half an hour before giving our bags the once over. They then checked out the truck and scowled at us each in turn before we were alowed to go our way.
- posted by Vince @ 1:49 PM