Bolivia — Sepanta

After our minds were blown at Iguazu, we had a nice 35-hour bus trip to process it all, ending up in La Quiaca, a town on the border of Argentina and Bolivia. Through entirely our own fault, Arsalan and I had some problems entering Bolivia.

Travel tips 101:

Have photocopies of your passport.
Have extra passport photos.
Know how much money you need to enter a country.

Long story short, we were told we needed photocopies to enter Bolivia, and they pointed us to a photocopy place on the Bolivian side. Only problem was the power was out for the next 6 hours, so no photocopies were possible. Eventually we convinced the border patrol to let us in without photocopies, but they still needed the $160 visa fee per person. No problem! I whipped out $320 in real US dollars, only for them to be inspected thoroughly. Most of the bills were turned down. We had to get stamped back into Argentina to go to an ATM (ATMs weren't working in Bolivia due to the power outage), return back to Bolivia to exchange the Argentine pesos for US dollars, and go back to the border. The border patrol agent (let's call him Nacho) still gave us a hard time, but Arsalan showed him a $5 bill and told him to put it in his pocket (as a joke). Nacho changed his mind and decided our bills were good enough. Then the police guy came up to us and told us to actually give him the $5 bill.

After finally entering Bolivia, we took a bus up to Tupiza where we booked a tour for the next 4 days through the Bolivian mountains, valleys, lakes, and most famously, Salar de Uyuni (salt flats). A quick night in Tupiza yielded an awesome meal and some cool street art. Che is big in Bolivia given it was his death place.

We'd heard the food in Bolivia was supbar but that ended up being very false

The next day, we set out. Put bluntly, Bolivia was insane, and if it wasn't on your radar it should be. In 4 days, we saw all kinds of landscapes, going from incredible mountains, colored lakes, alien swamps, and complete vastness. Here are some pictures.

Arsalan kept doing this, I'm not sure why

The beginning of the silly salt flat photos

Dr. Arsalan taking my stitches out back in La Paz. Don't worry everyone, I did great.