We went to the Bolivian Consulate in Salta yesterday. This is the biggest city in northern Argentina and not particularly attractive but it is important for us as we have reached a crossroads here.
The Bolivian consulate can issue us a visa to enter their country but the paperwork demands are extraordinary. Not only do we have to present photocopies for each of us of the usual papers but we also have to upload them online. And do it in a format acceptable to the foreign ministry in La Paz. Then we hand the paper over to the consular agent (a sweet helpful young woman in the consulate) in the building above. Then if we get a 30 day visa it’s $160 each.
We have to create an itinerary similar to the one above which clearly is part of a process designed for air travelers on fixed schedules. Also our letter from the hotel and campground owner in Villa Montes our proposed first stop in the country is inadequate as formatted. So we need to find an Internet cafe and write out a bunch of papers, invent signatures and letterhead and upload it all onto the consular website. If you too want to waste an hour of your life you’ll never get back, you can go online and apply for a visa to visit the multi ethnic republic of Bolivia.
The top of the page allows you to click on a statement made by democratically elected President Luis Arce, who recently defeated an attempted coup. The ostensible beneficiary of the attempted coup, former President Evo Morales is now charged with the rape of a minor. No holds barred electioneering in Bolivia in the run up to elections later this year. Bolivia is a mess.
For a country rich in lithium, silver and natural gas Bolivia is a total economic basket case. The government has no money. That’s all you need to know. They have literally no cash. To import fuel they must pay cash to shipping companies who send tankers to Arica in Chile and tanker trucks deliver fuel to Bolivia, and the country has to pay cash for each load. They have no cash so periodically fuel runs out in Bolivia until they can scrape together enough dollars to buy another load. Bolivia operates like a penniless student couch surfing. Truckers wait days in line for fuel hoping the imbeciles in government found some quarters under the cushions. The story above says Bolivia now has no dollars to buy medicines. The country’s rice crop has been wrecked by flooding. Landslides have closed roads. Local governments have no money to pay for repairs.
You hear people in the US lose their minds over socialism creeping into their lives. Bolivia is the real thing, a managed economy ground into the dirt by mismanagement and corruption. This is a country run by elites manipulating the economy and ignoring judges and the law. And we have to jump through hoops to get in. Sounds nuts right?
All this chaos is two hundred miles away and as chaotic and badly managed as Argentina is we can buy gas and cope with dreadful roads without running into the problems of Bolivia. Then there is the diplomacy. The freeway to Salta:
We have to buy a visa because the US requires the same of Bolivians. Plus our two governments hate each other. Bolivia is part of the Venezuela (entry prohibited to us but not Europeans) and Cuba axis of failure so everything is made difficult for us as a diplomatic tit for tat. It’s how diplomacy works and how geopolitics affects travelers. It’s normal if stupid. Argentine road hazards:
So by now you are very reasonably asking yourself why do we want to go there. We’re not sure we do. In some ways coping with Bolivia is a final exam. How do we handle ourselves in this failed state? Can we cope with protests and shortages and a population so wrapped up in its misery it has no time for us? Argentine roadside empanadas for sale:
Our friends from Washington Julia and Konstantin in their Sprinter van want to travel with us which is reassuring but concerning. If we go to Bolivia relying on their support and companionship we are not relying on our selves. The question for us is if we get past the Soviet style red tape to get in will we enjoy seeing what Bolivia has to offer. And are we ready to travel there alone if our companions take a different path? Dependence on others leads to even greater difficulties sometimes. I survived a month traveling alone across the Soviet Union in 1981, and I wasn’t much impressed by the communist threat back then when I saw how shitty the country looked unable to build even a decent hotel. Me in Irkutsk Siberia October 1981:
I had a travel agent in San Francisco organize my visa papers back then and my itinerary was set for every day in the USSR before I even flew to Japan to take a ship to Siberia. Now I have to talk myself into going to Bolivia instead of taking a trip back to the coast of Chile and wild camping on the beach. Tough choice. We’ll see how it goes.
Assorted northern Argentina. No helmets and babes in arms like in Perú:
Slow truck leading the parade. The raised white stripes make your car vibrate to slow you down before an intersection or school or dangerous corner ahead:
Breakfast tortillas Argentina style. She works her stand from 6 am to 2 pm.
Mountain fog out of Purmamarca:
Nice home in Salta:
Tree lined street in Salta. Lower class neighborhoods have torn up streets.
Maintenance free freeway:
The more motorcycles, the less wealth.
A Renault 4, a car from my youth.
A taxi driver protest against Uber closed the entrance to the municipal campground, the cherry on the shit sundae we had had in Salta…
So we put that in our rear view mirror and found an alternative.
Salta has a reputation for petty theft and vehicle break ins so we aren’t street camping thanks.
$16 a night and worth it.
