Tarabuco - Sucre - Tarija - Bermejo - Aguas Blancas - Oran - Salta - Puerto Iguazu: 31/10 - 04/11

We all returned to Wasi Masi where I packed and said my goodbyes to Jules and Siobhan and Jenni and Jere - thanks again guys! xx()() I got myself to the overnight bus to Tarija - it felt a bit of a struggle just getting to Potosi for some reason. Then the bus gimps told us ´OK, 10 minute toilet stop´ - 6 minutes later they´d started the bus and taken off, despite being vocally told there were still many people inside the terminal. Some made it on just outside the terminal while others caught up with the bus on the outskirts of town, understandably very upset. But it was good to see some Bolivians really standing up for themselves and voicing their displeasure at this type of situation that often seems to be the norm there.

The trip itself passed OK, I arrived in Tarija and immediately transferred to a shared taxi to border town Bermejo while I chewed away on the last of my coca. Of course we got a flat tyre as I watched it being fixed for $1.50 I finally realised why they were so common - they don´t actually use tubes. At Bermejo I changed moneys and crossed the bridge and border to Argentina involving the usual multi-step process. I eventually made it to Oran where I started to see the change in people to a whiter breed. From there a caught an uncomfortable but speedy shared-taxi to Salta, a large northern Argentinian town where I´d intended to directly transfer to a bus to Iguazu. This didn´t happen, the bus having left a few hours earlier, so I found one of the HI hostels in town and bunked down for a night.

Here I realised the full change of culture that was Bolivia -> Argentina. The people: disinterested in a satiated way (not staring at me like slackjaws so much anymore), ruder, richer, taller, whiter and much fatter. The culture: Western consumerism, lots of bread and wheat products, sugar and meat in the food. The language: lazy "Spanish", they don´t understand what Im saying and have their own variations on many common verb conjugations. The roads: MUCH better, drivers are respectful, vehicles good, buses excellent to the point of over-the-topness. The prices: WTF?¡¡¿ Almost as expensive as Australia for many things...

I need to store my backpack before leaving on the afternoon bus, but instead of my bus company storing it in their office, I had to pay again to the bus terminal storage people - then as I boarded I handed a luggage person my bag, costing me another small fee. WTF? I´d already paid over $100 for the journey, and at every bus in the Andean countries there had been no problem to store my bag before a journey for a few hours. Grrr.

The journey was very comfortable, with great soft bed-seat, reasonable Hollywood films in English and flat bitumen roads - 23 hours on that bus was far better than any 3 hours on a bus in Bolivia! I slept well overnight then woke to watch the countryside go by - incredibly rich countryside of green farmland with lots of crops and the famed Argentinian cattle before passing through agroforestry plots of radiata pine and eucalyptus. On the way we passed through such towns as Resistencia, Corrientes and Posadas, the further north we went the hotter it got. Finally luscious and intact rainforest signified we were arriving to Puerto Iguazu and its surrounding conservation area.

I walked around aimlessly aiming for a hostel, finding for the first time in a while several with no available space. Finally I was roped into staying at Stop!, which served the intended porpoise of accomodation. I did afternoony things like buying the next day`s tickets and meeting Dutch girls Ilona and Tamara. The next morning I woke very early to run through the pretty township to the misty riverside where drunk teenagers congregated to be unintelligent and I found my morning exercise very tough indeed. I returned to Stop! to pack and catch my shared taxi out to the national park and Iguazu Falls.