Lauren: Beth and I walked to the Pamela Tours office at 8am to begin our 3-day tour of Southern Bolivia. We met our other traveling companions, Katia from Spain (currently living in Ireland) and Brendan from Ireland who we had previously run into on our Valley of the Moon and Valley of Death tour, and our infamous torture-fest geyser tour. We met Marcus, from Germany, for the first time and the 5 of us all piled into the van bound for the Chilean border.

Once there, there were two large tour buses in front of us waiting to get their exit stamps. Our guide went to check things out and came back to inform us that the border patrol exit official was still asleep and we’d have to wait for him to arrive. We chatted in the car for over an hour while cars and tour groups piled up behind us. Finally, the immigration official arrived (Beth: He was pretty obviously hung over), we got our stamps, and took off to the Bolivian border control, an hour away and several thousand feet higher. (more…)