For the third time on this trip I left Argentina, but this time was the last as I head to Bolivia with my new entourage: Israeli Oron, and three young English-men called James, Danny and Avi who are here on their gap years. As a 26-year old female I was very much the odd one out in this little group, but if I can hang out with 50-70 year olds in Antarctica then surely this should not present too much of a challenge... especially with my new-found penchant for younger men!

The first stage of our journey out of Argentina was a night bus from Salta to the border town of La Quiaca, for most of which I kept poor young James awake with my life story, as he did a very good job of pretending to be interested before we both got very tired and went to sleep. We arrived in La Quiaca bright and early and set off for the border post. Thankfully this was only a few blocks away and the stretch of "no man's land" was just a short walk over a bridge, making this one of my easiest border crossings yet. For some reason throughout the crossing process we all wore one of Oron's many hats, which if nothing else seemed to entertain the border officials - things really are definitely a lot more relaxed than back at home.

The next stage was to get to the train station in the Bolivian border town Villazon - about 1km up the road. We piled Danny and Oron into a taxi along with all our luggage, as the rest of us strolled up the street empty-handed. Once we arrived at the train station we set back out on a hunt for banks and exchange houses to get our hands on some of the local currency here. En-route Oron bought himself yet another new hat and I purchased a rather over the top cowboy hat for a bargain £1.50. By the time we got back to the train station, all Ejecutivo (Executive class) and Salón (First class) tickets had sold out, leaving just Populár (Economy class), which we all imagined to be literally cattle class. Each of us paid £1.30 for the three hour train ride to Tupiza, which turned out to be pretty comfy as we all had an allocated padded seat, and a view of the beautiful countryside we were travelling through - Bolivia seems to be my kind of country.

By the time we arrived in Tupiza, darkness had well and truly set in as we scrambled off the train to retrieve out luggage. As there is not a whole lot to do in the town of Tupiza itself and the boys were in a bit of a rush, our first task was to book a tour to Uyuni and the salt flats for the following morning. Once this was taken care of we found a hostel and headed out for a great traditional Bolivian dinner of pizza, and a quick round of "Vicki Trivia" after hearing way too many of my stories before settling down for a good night's sleep.