Friday, August 1, 2008

The Coke guy

There is nothing worse than to arrive in a town where you expect to spend a lot of money only to be told there is no ATM in the town. Tupiza is such a town.

After Iguazu we spent a few days making our way west in Argentina to get to a place where we could begin a Salt Flats tour.

We had to cross the border from Argentina to Bolivia early one morning. Freezing of course. We had a sandwich each in our bag and we were terrified of being stopped and having the lettuce from our sandwiches confiscated!

When we had crossed the border, one of our gringo aquaintances asked Elaine to mind his bag while he bought a bus ticket to Uyuni. So that was grand. Old Elaine was there minding his bag, and he came back and was putting the bag in luggage storage and Elaine was helping him. Then he said ´wait I just have to get something´ and he opened his bag and took out a giant bag of coke in the middle of a public bus station - right in front of Elaine. She was horrified that she had been minding his bag with cocaine in it in a public place with soldiers and police around!

The funny thing about that was that we were sweating over bringing sandwiches over the border in our rucksacks when this lad cruised over the border with cocaine at the top of his school bag!!!

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