Villa Montes

We left Filadelfia Wednesday 1st August for Bolivia. Our bus was at 1am so at 11pm we left the house to go wait at the church in town. This was really a surreal journey with the craziness beginning at about 7pm during dinner with me suddenly getting really sick. Not cool considering we had a long night of travelling ahead of us. After going to the church and waiting for a couple of hours there (me in excruciating pain in my intestines), we got back in the car to go wait on the side of the main street in town for the bus. When the bus hadn't arrived by about 3:30am we got back in the car and went back to the church to rest until 6am, when we got back in the car and went back to the main road to wait for the bus again. Eventually we got going by about 8:30am. Turns out the bus had broken down somewhere between Asuncion and Filadelfia.

After a fairly smooth morning of driving we got to the border which was an adventure in itself, it was a dusty tiny shack of a border crossing, the most third world we've come across on this journey (it reminds me of African borders!!), it was completely disorganised with the officials not being particularly helpful or polite to us, not least because we didn't have visas for our 15 Americans!! Not to mention the "helpful assistant" who was in fact drunk...

Third world border of note!

Waiting...

After an hour or so of backwards and forwards with the Paraguay/Bolivian passengers getting more and more irritated with us gringos (foreigners) taking so long, we somehow managed to pass through the border with the required visas, saying we'd go to the nearest office the next morning and get them then! So back on the bus we got, with a border official who came with us to help us get the visas the next day. We'd hardly crossed over the border, plus had to get on and off at least 3 or 4 times for various military checks (actually to this day I'm still not sure what was going on but on and off we got as there were many men in uniforms asking us to!), when we turned off for a diversion straight into a very sandy off road, only to get stuck in the sand when we had a tree trunk fallen across the road. Err.

Katherine's face says it all, that knowing look of "oh... this doesn't look good!"

So then our guys got off the bus to help the driver push/pull whatever to get the bus unstuck. Eventually we had to wait until a passing truck came from the opposite direction who could pull the bus out.

Our men helping take care of the stuck bus problem!

Back on the bus we got and eventually we arrived in Villa Montes, our Bolivian destination, tired, dirty and very hungry!!

This is how we often arrive - it's dark, we're tired, hungry and have no

idea where to go to find food, accommodation for the night, and of course

the much needed ATM since this is our first stop in the new country

Friday was a day of rest for those who didn't need a visa, which included discovering a great local market with fresh fruit and vegetable juices. My heart was really happy to be back in a third world country, although I must admit that I was not loving all the associated bug bites. I just react so badly to them, I'm definitely not a natural girl!!