Bye to Bolivia, Hola to Argentina

Route:
La Paz - Uyuni (bus)
Uyuni - Villazon (bus)
Villazon - La Quaica (foot, crossing the border to Argentina)
La Quaica - Salta (bus)
Salta - Mendoza (bus)

• I´ve covered a fair bit of ground since the last update. I´m all the way down in central Argentina - I just arrived in a city called Mendoza after an 18 hour bus journey. Thankfully the buses in Argentina are amazing - I got a sleeper bus and spent most of the night comfortably dozing away. They serve you food and I even got a (fairly massive) glass of whisky after the meal, which was unexpected but nice, and helped me sleep!
• There is no comparison between buses and roads in Argentina and Bolivia. Argentina actually has roads. Bolivia has dirt tracks carved into the side of a mountain or the desert. Bolivia also has batshit insane drivers that think they´re Michael Schumacher and that they´re driving his Ferrari when they´re actually most likely drunk and are driving a shitbucket from the 70s. On those bloody dirttracks.
• I loved Bolivia, but it was definitely the most challenging place I´ve been, so I was quite glad to get to Argentina. The infrastructure in Bolivia is pretty awful and the food isn´t the best. But there is so much to see in terms of crazy landscape, excellent tours and the like, and it is ridiculously cheap. Less than a fiver for a decent hostel, and I had a really excellent three course meal, with an Irish Coffee, in one of the nicer places I could find in La Paz for about 8 quid. Try doing that in Edinburgh or Dublin!
• The last week in Bolivia involved one of the highlights of my trip - the Salar de Uyuni. This is basically the dried out remains of an ancient salt lake. It´s an expanse of flat, salty terrain about the size of Northern Ireland. It´s a crazy, surreal place. It´s punctuated by a few odd features - the Isla de Pescada which has living cacti - this looks rather odd right in the middle of what is essentially a desert! There are also the remains of a volcano which were pretty spectacular. Travelling through the south of the country was also pretty special, the desert there is very like the wild west.
  
• I´m feeling a lot bloody healthier. La Paz is pretty polluted, and as I said before, travelling around the country is pretty horrendous. As well as this, people party their way through La Paz repeatedly. This meant that pretty much everyone I met in Bolivia was, or had recently been, ill.
• I went to Salta in Northern Argentina next. There is nothing to do there, apart from chill out. Which suited me fine after at 27 hour journey from Uyuni!
• Mendoza is wine territory. Tomorrow, I´m off to ride a bike between vineyards and get slowly pissed. Life is good!
• Six weeks of crappy South American music have made be crack and buy a new mp3 player today. Thankfully I´ve got a 2Gb keyring with some tunes on it for just such an emergency!
  
• I hope you´re all well and miss you guys! Edinburghers, hope you´re enjoying the festival!