The bus ride to the Argentinian- Bolivian border was pretty quick and we arrived on a cold Monday morning at around 6 am. My over tiredness from the 4 previous bus rides and from lack of sleep was quickly forgotten when I was told that South Africans needed a visa to get into Bolivia. Now you are probably asking that surely this was something i would of looked into before travelling to a new country. And yes it was!! See below
Bolivi
Passport required. Visa not required for tourist stay up to 30 days. Tourist cards issued upon arrival in Bolivia. A "Defined Purpose Visa" for adoptions business or other travel requires 1 application form 1 photo and $50 fee and company letter explaining purpose of trip. Send SASE for return of passport by mail.
I believe this website only applies to Americano !!!!!
Somehow through Spanglish communication with the passpost control I found out I needed to make my way to the Bolivian consulate a few streets up and get a visa. The consultae only opening at 9 am ie 3 hours later. After thoughts of just flying home to SA and giving up completely, I managed to catch a taxi to the consulate and sort the issue out. The town on the border looked similar a run down Alexandra, if thats even possible.
Bolivia is everything everyone every says about it. A shite hole!! But extremely cheap. The town on the border was Villzon. We stayed here for about 3 hours and then caught a bus to a town 2 hours away called Trupiza.
Trupiza is known for the location of the graves of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid and pretty much nothing else. On first view it looked like a one horse town with a few pizzarias to staisfy the local needs of Gringos passing through. After agreeing that we deserved some comfort after our travel ordeal we booked into the local hotel..Mitro hotel. The hotel was also know for organsing the best tours around southern Bolivia and even though they were not the cheapest they were definately the best. 



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