Train Travel & Other Exciting Adventures ~ No.4

South America!! Which was surprisingly much easier to travel around than I'd thought it would be. And the Cama buses. Oh how I wish National Express would introduce them for journeys here, it really is the way to travel!!

But I still didn't neglect my trains, and so the first journey was an overnight train from Villazon, in Bolivia, just over the border from Argentina to Oruru, about 4 hours from La Paz. The first challenge was making it to the train station on time. My 16 hour bus to take me to the Argentine border, La Quiaca was only 2 hours late, but then it took 4 hours to queue to get through immigration. By this time, everyone was telling me that the tickets would have sold out, but when i arrived at the ticket office with about half an hour to spare, there were plenty of 2nd Class tickets available, which entitled me to a little bit reclining seat, plenty of legroom and a heater! Perfect!!

The journey was quite terrifying, as there were sections where the earth had entirely eroded away, on some of the cliff edges, and the rails were literally hanging over nothing, but I am not sure that the roads would have been any better! I had 2 seats to myself so had plenty of room and a man arrived first thing in the morning with a steaming pot of tea.

We then thought the easy bit was getting the bus from Oruru to La Paz, as it was only a few hours, and the bus touts wait at the station to herd you all onto their buses so they can leave straight away. Unfortunately, about an hour into our journey, the driver pulled off the road, and drove into the middle of nowhere, and then stopped the bus and demanded more money from everyone before he would continue. I would have understood more if the bus was full of tourists, as they would be an easy target, but there was only me and 2 Belgian guys on the bus who weren't Bolivians.

So the arguments started....and continued....through my basic Spanish I got that they were asking 5 Bolivianos more from everyone. Considering there was about 4.6 to £1 when I was there, that really isn't anything, but when you consider that we only paid 15 Bolivianos in the first place, it is quite an increase.

Eventually everyone realised that we didn't really have a choice so we all paid up and continued on our way to La Paz!

My next train journey was actually in Panama and was much more civilised, but also much more expensive. I took the tourist railway along the Panama canal from Panama City to Colon. Colon is pretty scary, but I managed to find the largest taxi driver I've ever seen in my life, who ended up pretty much proposing to me, but also showed me all around the Panama canal and it is really interesting watching all the ships being raised and lowered to get through.