We were sad to say goodbye to Bolivia as we took an hour and a half ride to the border that would take us into Argentina. Bolivia has been very good to us but I did feel that getting somewhere that was a little more developed would be a nice change. We arrived to the border and were told to walk around the corner to the Migration Office... dear Mother of God! The line was huge! We joined the back of it begrudgingly and asked how long other people had been waiting and we were told to expect a couple of hours.

Low and behold, two hours later we made it to the front and saw a whole bunch of travellers hanging around. Turns out they had arrived 5-6 hours earlier and had been told to wait because they were letting specific busses go through first and got others to wait. Unfortunately for them we were travelling independently, without a scheduled bus and so they watched us walk right in when we got to the front and we said goodbye and goodluck to them as we walked right on out. We felt bad for them but happily took our gear and walked over to the Argentinian side. This only took about 45 minutes and we were through and in Argentina!

We found the bus terminal and watched the busses we would have loved to catch, drive out without us and so we had to wait and got tickets for a another 2 hours later. This bus wasn't what we were promised and we were unimpressed but glad to be moving. To add to our moods we also found out that we were lied to when we were told we would arrive at 11pm that night, ready to have a party for St Paddy's Day. We pulled into our destination, Salta, at 2am. We had a few drinks on the bus to try and get in the mood to go out but after a 7 hour trip turning into 17 we hit the hay instead.

Salta was always just a stopover point for us but we checked it out the next day and found a nice plaza where we enjoyed a nice breakfast and a gondola that took us to the top of a hill overlooking the city for some nice views. We had planned to head south to another town and cross the Andes into Chile. Our research on this turned out to be mightily wrong and to get to Chile we had to get back on a nbus and head north, missing the town we would have like to see and backtracked back up from where we had already come down.

We got stuck in a small town in the middle of nowhere, still in Argentina. We were forced to stay there overnight in wait for a bus the following morning and finally crossed over into Chile through the biggest "No Mans Land" (gap between two countries' migration points at the border) we have ever seen. This bus became pretty uncomfortable for both Loz and Kate as they both had unbearable itches that wouldn't go away. Turns out they both got attacked by bed bugs from outdoor furniture they were sitting on the night before. Dotes and I were spared as we were gentlemen and let the girls sit on the nice cushioned chairs while we sat on wooden table chairs.

We made it into a city in Northern Chile called Calama. We missed an overnight bus and we again forced to stay overnight here which proved to be ridiculously difficult as the entire town was booked out. We walked around for what felt like 2 hours and finally Dotes found what could have easily been a drug den (it wasn't but certainly looked like one) and got to sleep straight away, but the girls got little sleep because of their bed bug bites. We caught an early bus out of there and finally got to our destination after five out of six days of bus travel and a bad dose of bed bugs.

Caldera and Bahia Iglesa, two nice little coastal towns right next to each other with beaautiful beaches and nice weather. This is exactly what we were aiming for and needed after the previous week. Although we had the same problem as Calama, in that everything was fully booked and we struggled to find somewhere to stay. Luckily though we found this guys Carlos, who rode down on his bicycle and took us up to his little house where he rents out rooms. There were other people staying there but they might as well been ghosts as we basically had the place to ourselves the whole time which was amazing!

We spent four night here and enjoyed the beach, a few beers and just generally relaxing. The rest of our time here was washing every single piece of clothing, our backpacks and anything that could have been infested with the disgusting little creatures that have no purpose but to piss people off. We also got ripped off by a "lovely lady" who volunteered to wash our clothes for us to make an extra buck. We didn't realise by actually how much straight away as we'd just entered the country and didn't know the currency and exchange rate very well yet, but oh well, lesson learned.

We really enjoyed our time on the beach after a couple of months in the jungle, desert and snow and can't wait for more sun and beach time!!