Tilcara to La Quiaca, bye bye Argentina

We left Salta for Tilcara in northern argentina...getting one step closer to Bolivia. Had arranged to meet Ryan, one of our fellow travellers, there and then head on to Bolivia together.

Aoife and Naoimi

Arrived in pretty late a night and the place seemed completely backward and completely dead. Met a girl from the Canaries who parents were Irish and had a right Dublin accent from her college days. We were approached my a stragne looking dude in the bus station and luckily because Naomi had fluent spanish she was able to tell us that he wasnt a complete wierdo but just had a room available for the night.

We took off with them and he took us to a fab little guesthouse with some of the nicest rooms we'd seen so far. Turns out that his wife was Italian and had spent some time working in the northside in Cork so when she spoke English she had a big Cork accent on her.

Diego and his Wife

Hooked up with Ryan that night adn smapled some of the towns' food and entertainment... a bit of Lama and a pixie loking dude playing a guitar! Didn{t hang around Tilcara very long, got a bus to La Quiaca, the border town with Bolivia the next day. It was a prety scenic journey travelling through the regions with mountains striped with red, green and yellow rock...pretty spectacular.

The boder town of La Quiaca was pretty unimpressive so we made the quick crossing to Bolivia, where the change was noticable straight away. The prices dropped by about half, the bad smell multiplied and the people looked a lot more ethnic than their European looking neighbours.

Ruins

View from the ruins

View of hills around Tilcara

Weird coloured mountains on the road to the border