4th post!

..but the Salta stay became much shorter than it should´ve been. After taking a walk around midtown, i sat down with the very nice people Allison and John, discussing everything from pancakes to Ricky Gervais.

The next day i was advised to get the bus to La Quiaca, a city right by the Bolivian border. On the bus i met a very nice british couple in their 60s. Upon arrival at 9ish pm, we helped eachother out getting to hostel "copacabana", where i got my private room. My, my, my! From there, we amazingly managed to find a supermarket, where we got ourselves todays dinner; pasta with tomato sauce and sardines. The most decent meal i had since Buenos Aires.

The next morning, we hit the Bolivian border, expecting to spend our next few hours in customs. But after showing our passports twice, and filling out our purposes for this trip, we were good to go. (A bit surprised that they weren´t more sceptical towards my norwegian passport..) So, after making our visit to the ATM in the all to densely populated city of Villazon, we headed straight for the bus station. The couple - let´s call them James and May (i hope they never read this) - jumped straight on the bus to Tupiza, while i went inside to check for departures for Uyuni. But since the first one wasnt until the day after, and that the train for the same city wasn´t leaving till 6 or so; why not jump on the 3 pm non-stop bus to La Paz? Because it was freakin FREEZING!

(just a little comma; after i purchased my ticket, a guy came up to me and presented himself as a "businessman from Cameroon". He thought i was wasting money getting a 90 boliviano (100 kr.) ticket. He would be very happy to drive me to La Paz for 10 BS. Unfortunately, my ticket was non-refundable. Otherwise, i`d be happy to..!)

I´d absolutely heard about the cold nights in Bolivia, but i thought i might take the chance. Especially since i asked whether the bus was heated and if there was a toilet there. Her answer? Yes and yes. the real answer? no and no! But i thought i might survive, as i wore a double layer of wool under my thickest sweater, as with the pants, and a wind breaker. The first three hours were all right, and the first two hours after sundown not all that bad either. After our 8 PM stop at "Restaurant La Paz" in the middle of nowhere, (whose soup wasn`t all that bad, actually!) i did my first attempt to go to sleep. At 10 i woke up feeling slightly cold, so i took out my silk linen/sheet (thanks, Silje). That lasted till about 11:30, when i woke up because my nose hurt. The outside temperature could not have been much higher than -5, AS ON THE INSIDE. Heated bus, thank you very much. After different ways of improvising, i somehow managed to get the feeling back in my toes, which lead to another three consecutive hours of sleep. "non-stop" was actually a bit of an exaggeration. About three times, the bus would stop, so that the driver could tell some jokes to his friends. They all had a big laugh for about ten minutes, until he was too cold to continue.

After one more hour of sleep i woke up at 5-ish, hoping that the bus would be on schedule (6 am). Surely, we entered the city at 6, but for no apparent reason whatsoever (baring in mind that the city´s total population is about 1,5 million), it took us about 45 minutes to get to the bus station.

I decided to leave my Karl Pilkington-attitude on the bus with the coldness and the non-existing toilet, and whistled my way to the Taxi line. After a short cabride, i was standing in front of what appeared to be one of the most promising hostels inn La Paz; Onkel Inn. oh yes! After a quick shower, i ran into one of my roommates, Stephan from Germany. He´s a spanish student (how`s that for convenience?), so we managed to the the city in just a few hours. First, i purchased my first genuine Alpakka garment; a scarf for 40 nok. After that, we did the famous Coca museum, which contained a fare amount of funfacts about coca leaves. About the possibility to make cocaine out of it (obviously), medical use, and of course; in the making of the worlds best-selling trademark. Then we went to a viewpoint/children park kind of thing where we could snap our obligatory tourist shots.

Although chewing my fair amount of the mentioned coca leaves, i still feel kind of tired, so this is why im now sitting down, being the most boring traveler in town, just so that i could update you guys on some of the latest happenings!

Have a good one, eh?