Weddingcrashers

I never thought I would visit a country in South America more cheap than Nepal until I got to Bolivia. From rather inexpensive Argetinian steaks, prices dropped to an ultimate low of 20 eurocents for a burger or if you were overly hungry make it into a supersize burger for 40 eurocents! But let´s start from the start by travelling to the border of Argentina to Bolivia.

´The cold wakes you up´ they say, well this definately was the case arriving at the border, were due to the combination of a serious increase in altitude, a long sleep and freezing outside temperature, we definitely knew we were awake. While I tried to stop my lower cheekbone from inventing new technobeats, we had to walk about 2 km´s to the border. While stamping our passports the asicsboys had started a conversation with 2 english girls and I had greated a dutchy with ´hey, cheese! how are you doing?´ which made the group increase from 4 to 7 members. Already from the moment we entered Bolivia people were greeting us nicely with a big smile, sometimes so big to that they tried to compensate for being so short.

After a day brake in Tupiza just over the border, we were about to start a day, which can be considered as real backpacking. A busride in ´metal-thing-on-4-wheels-that-hopefully-brings-us-to-our-destination-without-killing-us´ supposed to bring us in about 6 ours to Uyuni. Shaking in every direction, without a lot of fresh air in the bus, we started the ascent. After 2 hours of nice sightseeing and being at an altitude of 3000m the metal-thing-on-etc decided to breakdown in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, just like in India or Nepal, these drivers are a.k.a mechanics and most of the time, if having the right tools, will be able to get the metal-thing-etc back on the road before you know it. Well.... not this time. After 2 hours of trying everything he could he decided to hitchhike back to were we came from, which should take him at least 4 hours to get back, to get some spare parts. Henry, one of the asics boys, was already getting cranky, because this wasn´t really what he had in mind about how to spend his B-day. So after about 6,5 hours of being in the middle of nowhere, our driver had returned and fixed the bus. Hitting the road again, instead of 3 in the afternoon we arrived around midnight in Uyuni, which had already turned into a ghosttown. To chear up Henry, we decided to have a walk around town, in order to find a bar or something, where we could at least have a small celebration for him. Suddenly we heard music coming from close to where we were staying and went to check it out. A massive (for Bolivian standards) military dude was standing in de door, fully loaded, completely ready in case world-war 3 might break out. Jeffrey, the other dutchy, chatted a bit with him and before we knew, we were inside realising that we were crashing a wedding! Everybody inside, was of course curious who these ´much bigger than Bolivian´-people were. within a few seconds everybody were handing us all kinds of strange alcohol mixes and while dancing with everybody and greeting everybody inside. What a party!

Keep y´all posted!!!