How (almost) every possible thing that could go wrong on a Bolivian bus did, on the same journey...
we arrived at the bus station at 10 for our 10.30 bus, as requested...
bus arrived at 11.30
then I was told that the different companies were combined into one bus, which was overbooked, and I didn't have a seat for the first two hours.
I looked the woman sternly in the eye and asserted in my best spanish: I paid for a seat, I want a seat, and is i don't get a seat, I want some of my money back (except that the work 'back' came out in german, but she got the idea.
I was miraculously found a seat, which unfortunately was at the back, not by the window, as apposed to the booked mid-bus window seat that would have been kinder on my delicate stomach, and I was SURROUNDED by babies of 4 months to 2 years, crawling and mewling and ga-ing for their lives.
Hey ho, I draw my legs up to my chest to brace my stomach against the gravel road, and prepare for 7 hours of the same... but five minutes down the road... we ground ourselves on a steep bridge. Half an hour of precarious plank manoeuvres and we're off again, this time for a good 50 mins before grinding to a halt half way up a hill. (I learnt the word for breakdown: rompio). an hour of tinkering by the drivers proves fruitless, so one of them was dispatched back to town in a hitchhiked pick-up. After THREE hours, a wander off to find a quiet bush, and a visit from an opportunist biscuit-seller, it looks like we're good to go again.
3 minutes, and we stop again. It's decided that this bus (which looked good to us when we got on, but they obviously paid for a new paint job instead of a service) was a lost cause, and to our rescue came a local 40-seater jobbie. Trouble was, there were nearly a hundred of us.
No matter - every man for himself and we all squeezed in. I was standing in the aisle becoming way more familiar than one should with the butt cheeks of the Argentinian behind me. The little overloaded motor panted and sweated up every hill, but at 7pm, 8 1/2 hours after we we meant to leave Tupiza, we arrived at our 'lunch stop'
I noted who was getting off at this stop, did a quick circuit of loo-water shop-cracker shop (I was feeling a little better by that point but wasn't going to risk the local chicken and chips with 5 toilet-less hours left to go was I?), and trotted back to the bus early - I would happily give up 10 mins of leg stretching for 5 hours of a seat. joy of joys, I sat down next to one of the largest Bolivian men there is, a bit cramped but just oh so happy to be sitting down, I put my ear plugs in, turned my brain off and dozed my way to Potosi.
I had been worried by the line on the hostel's website 'if you are arriving after midnight, you MUST inform us or you will be stuck outside until the morning'. Ah well, hopefully there's someone booked in for 2am, or we'll just make a racket until someone lets us in. Thank goodness - that was the only part of the day that went to plan, and all I had to do now was don every piece of clothing I owned (including hat and gloves) before I was warm enough to go to sleep. Stingy buggers - the heating only goes on in winter, but at 4,000 asl its not exactly balmy on summer evenings!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment