Another update from the road

What's happening everybody?  Right now I'm in the bus terminal in Puno, Peru with the guys waiting for our bus to Cusco. Playing cards has gotten old so I'm gonna start writing some posts on the trip thus far.  We were supposed to leave last Friday but there were some complications with the truck and the insurance company, so we left on saturday morning. We took the ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia, Uruguay then a bus to Montevideo then another bus to a small town in the north of Uruguay called Melo. We stayed with a man named Mauricio who is the manager of max's dad's farm in the town. He was super hospitable and helped us prepare the truck, our route, and gave us some advice on where to stay. 

We took off in the truck on Sunday morning, driving all the way across Uruguay to a place called Salto where we crossed the border into Argentina. From there we went north to Corrientes and spent the night. Monday we drove from Corrientes straight west to Salta, stopping in a few tiny pueblos for food along the way.  We found a long term garage for the truck which cost us only $50 for 2 weeks, about the same as you pay for a beer at a Yankees game.  We hung out and explored Salta for a few hours before our bus to La Quiaca on the Bolivian border.  Max and I found this cool 99 year old liquor store that had hundreds of old beer cans and liquors and other cool stuff. I think my dad would have found it really interesting. I also had lost my copy of Fahrenheit 451 on the bus, so we stopped in a bookstore to get something for the long bus rides. I got The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. If any of you have read it you'll know that it's a very difficult read, so I'm pushing through it with a little bit of trouble.

We arrived at La Quiaca at about 630am and it was unimaginably cold. We walked across the border to Villazon only to find out that Bolivian migrations doesn't open until 730am, so we stood, extremely unprepared for the cold, on the sidewalk for a while until they let us in.  There's absolutely nothing to do in Villazon so we just grabbed some food and outfitted ourselves with a ton of winter alpaca clothes for a total of about $15.

We then took a bus to Uyuni, Bolivia. The bus ride there was more than interesting. It was supposed to be 8 hours long, but as not a single road in Bolivia is paved, it took about 11. And 11 hours of very twisty off-roading across the mountains in seats that we absolutely didn't fit in. It was really miserable. 

I need to head down to the gate for the bus now, but next time I'm sitting around and don't feel like tormenting my brain with that book I'll post again. Enjoy the summer everybody, don't take it for granted. Trust me, you'd miss it if you couldnt have it.

Ps- I actually wrote this post a few days ago, we've explored Peru and are actually back in Bolivia now.  The problem is I can only update this blog with these posts from my ipod when I have wifi, which isn't exactly a common thing here, so the posts will all be kinda far behind.  I'll keep writing when I have time. Real time update- we're in La Paz until Saturday then doing a 3 day tour in the Amazon.