August 14-15: LA QUIACA

Everybody discouraged us to visit La Quiaca: "Es muy feo!" (it's very ugly!) Yet that repeated sentence strongly awakened our curiosity to visit the town. Listening to the description people made about it, we were expecting a very primitive poor little village. We were actually quite surprised to face a real town with an existing bus terminal, colored streets (some of them are even well-equipped), restaurants, parks, schools and a lot more. La Quiaca is almost a bolivian town as it is precisely located at the border with Bolivia (nearest bolivian city being Villazon) and there is a simple bridge separating the two countries (besides, argentinians usually mention La Quiaca to refer to something that is very far away). But La Quiaca is not all-smiles. Historically and until now, many bolivians overloaded with goods would rather cross the bridge daily to work in La Quiaca for miserable salaries (yet higher than the ones they could get in their own country). The main market reflects the current difficult situation, also does the bus terminal that is permenently full of people holding one million bags waiting to go home.

The bus to La Quiaca stopped infront of a school (usually located in the countryside in order to be close to several villages at once) and a bunch of children jumped in. Right at that moment, Javier, a beautiful child, started to chat with us. He pointed at where he lived from the window. This half bolivian kid shares the house with his sister and grandmother, he almost never meets his parents as they work in other cities but he's healthy, goes to school and have friends. Javier's situation can be defined as privileged since numerous orphans or poorer families hang around in town. Javier suddenly disappeared as the bus arrived at destination. We regretted not saying goodbye. But the young fellow was waiting for us outside with a smile and affectionately insisted on showing us the town. I fell in love with that little boy who was surprisingly mature and wise. Later on, we offered him strawberries and exchanged a farewell hug as we were heading to Yavi for the evening.