"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."
After leaving Sucre, I spent a few days in a small cowboy town in southern Bolivia. While walking around this funny town, I met up with a French couple and French guy I had spent the time in Sucre with, so, when they left to visit the famous Salar de Uyuni, I followed along. In our 4X4 it was us, and a Belgian, which made for a very good group. It was a four day trip through the desert (at 5,000m), and then through a part of the largest salt flat in the world (sadly, because it's the rainy season, we didn't get to go all the way through). The salt flat is literally as it sounds, an immense area covered with salt. In the dry season, it is blindingly white, while in the rainy season, it turns into a lake in parts. We also spent the night in a hotel made solely of salt, everything from the bed, to the chairs, to the walls. It was definitely one of the most stunning things I have seen.
After catching a bus at 3h (I don't know why their busses can't be at more convenient times), we arrived at the border (with Chile) in the morning, where we saw corruption at work as always in Bolivia. To leave, they were asking 15 bolivianos, about two dollars, which isn't much for us, but if a hundred people pass, that's two hundred dollars (more than most people there make in a month). Sure, we could spare the money, but knowing it was free, we politely but firmly refused. When the guy insisted, we asked for a receipt, which obviously didn't exist. He let us through saying he would mark on his computer (that was off) that we had not paid. Yeah right. After a few more hours of waiting, we passed into Chile. Overall it took over five hours to do that one small km. From there we entered into the driest desert in the world. There was literally nothing, no towns, no animals, no vegetation, just desert and blue sky. I spent most of my time in a hammock during the day since it was too hot to venture out, but in the morning and night it was cool and we were able to explore a bit the vast desert around us. We (the French and I) were staying in a camping, something that exists all through Argentina and Chile. It is literally a campground in or just outside the city, that is much cheaper than the outrageously expensive hostels. It was also a nice change, and I plan on always staying in campings while in this part of the continent.
On the day we left Chile (the rest of that country will be for next trip), we left at six in order to be the first at the boarder since we wanted to hitchhike with a trucker. They turned us away from entering and getting stamped since we didn't have any transportation arranged (and the next village, or life what so ever was more than 200km away through the desert), but luckily we were able to find one to take us so we turned right around and hopped in with him. Normally when you take a truck it takes twice as long, but with our driver, it was twice as fast! We arrived about 150km from our destination, and tried to catch another ride to Salta that night with no luck (no one was going that way). To catch a ride, I had a sign saying Salta and I would jump aroundand follow every car that past. Though we had no luck, everyone waved and laughed when they saw us, and I had a great time doing it. We were right in front of people selling bread and donuts, and apparently they found us amusing as well because they gave us free food every hour. The also let us set up our hammocks for the night in their stand, but while we were doing that, someone came out of their house and invited us to eat with them, and camp out in their back yard. In that first day here in Argentina, we saw just how different the people here are. In the Andean countries, the people could care less that you are there, and many are rude. Here on the other hand, when you take out a map, you have someone right there beside you asking if you need help, and after helping you, they walk you part of the way as well. It is definitely a nice change.
After camping the night in someone backyard, we decided we liked the area and ended up camping close to a lake the next night. After that, we successfully hitchhiked out to Salta, were we are currency staying (I'm still with the French). Pretty soon we will hitchhike on out to, well, that's the thing about hitchhiking, you never quite know where you will end up!
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