So I set off to make my way from La Paz to Tupiza.
The Travel Plan
My intention was to take a bus from La Paz to Ururu (3 hours) and a train from Ururu to Tupiza (9 hours).Plan versus reality
10:13 I had a greasy omelette and checked out of the brew hotel. My bill for four nights including a dinner and two pints of stout was 345 bolivianos. I strapped on my backpack and my day pack which was jammed full of electronics, walked down the street one block and turned left to walk several hundred meters up the hill to the bus terminal. Many bus companies that displayed trips to Oruru were unoccupied or just told me no. There was a very long line in front of another window. By the time I got the front the woman pulled out a fresh ticket book and stamped the date three times on each page one for the ticket, the stub and the office copy. Stamp in the ink pad, stamp, stamp, stamp on the page. Next page, repeat. The clock rolled past 10:00, I guess I was buying a seat on the 11:00. This is why I arrived an hour early. A Bolivian aphorism is "In Bolivia all things are possible but nothing is guaranteed." I purchased a semi reclining seat for 30 bs for the three hour trip and 2 b terminal tax and sat down to read for an hour.I walked slowly, this was embarassingly arduous. I felt better when I read in the Lonely Planet that one should just take a taxi, the high altitude and the steepness of the road combine to make this a challenging walk with a back pack.
11:07 The 11 o'clock bus left very shortly after the scheduled departure time, after the cookie hawker and terminal tax inspector completed their rounds I am clad in shorts, a shirt, a guide vest and a rain jacket.
15:42 I inquired about the location of the train station and was advised to take a taxi. The train was sold out. It is not possible to reserve tickets over the phone or buy on the internet. Even on days the train operates the ticket window is sporadically attended. Great, now I have to take a frigging bus, the more scenic route but certainly not nearly as pleasant a journey, so I taxied back to the bus terminal. Window after window I was told it was not possible to buy a ticket to Tupiza even though it was displayed as one of their routes. I finally found a company that sold me a ticket and told me it was no problem. I have no idea why they said that, although I was to find out later that it was a hell of a problem. The bus leaves at 5:00 pm and arrives at 6:00 am. Well anything beats sitting in this shit hole of a town. Maybe I should take the 3 hour ride back to LaPaz and take the overnight tomorrow with my bud from Pittsburgh. No, just press on. I bought the ticket and went out to the lot to wait for the departure. Busses drove by and fogged us with exhaust every five minutes.
18:08 An hour late our bus shows up. I present my backpack to the luggage guy who was busy rearranging the current cargo, jamming his back against boxes and with a leg press jamming luggage bags and boxes into spots too small to hold them without deformation. I sure as hell hope that these bags only contain rice and beans. I board the bus and take my assigned seat. An extremely weathered tiny, thin ??? Indian woman took a seat next to me after padding it with an enormous blanket that she carried in a bag that was a foot thick and 30 inches on a side, the label said the blanket weighed 6.7 kilos, that's a lot of blanket.
20:08 We stopped at a restaurant on the side of the road, the only building within many miles. I bought a "hamburger" for 4 bs. The hamburger was a fried egg, tomato and french fry sandwich. A bowl of soup was another bs and a cup of jello was 1.5 bs. An hour later we finally moved on. I don't know if the driver was taking a conjugal visit or what the deal was but this was a long stop.
2:23 Another stop in the middle of nowhere, I don't know what is here, most people just stayed on the bus.
3:41 We finally resume our travel, what is the deal with these stops?
4:21We stopped again. Most people get out of the bus, the guys piss everywhere. The sky is clear and the stars are bright. Cigarettes and pot are consumed in large quantities. I look at the stars for a while and go back to my seat. The bus is turned off. I guess the driver is taking a nap. Cruz del Sur in Peru had two drivers that alternated one slept while the other drove.
7:46We are still stopped. Lots of protests as we are charged 10 bs apiece. I have no idea what the charge is for.
7:55 The bus starts up and turns around. So much for my 6:00 arrival time.
8:54 On the south side of town vendors sit on the dirt or tarps selling all manner of wares including building supplies, produce, plastic bowls. We reach a field littered with plastic bags to the horizon.
11:46 We stop in a town everybody gets off. By the time I disembark from my seat near the rear the bus driver and the attendant are nowhere to be seen and my backpack is locked in storage.
12:52 The bus driver is lunching. I want my backpack. He opens the storage area which is completely packed and then shuts it without giving me my backpack. As I insist on getting my pack I am assaulted in Spanish by the driver and a dozen people who try to make things clear to me by speaking very rapidly and loudly in Spanish. Just as an American will explain to a foreigner, a louder tone makes things easier to understand. The crowd takes turns as two or three people blare out incomprehensible sentences. I finally understand that this is not Tupiza, this bus is not going to Tupiza and that there is no way to get to Tupiza from here. The road to Tupiza is closed. Now I understand why this was "no problem". It just can't be done, I am being routed to far South East Bolivia, passengers are bound for the hottest city in Bolivia, well east of my destination. It is another eight hours to the destination of the bus and from there I can get a bus for a three hour ride to Tupiza. F**k me in the a** with a stick.
13:30 The bus heads out, now I have my backpack and board the bus. I have no place to put the backpack. A very cute young thing gestures to the seat next to her so I place my backpack there and take my seat. She then gestured that I should put the back pack in my seat and sit next to her. Beats the hell out of the old lady I was sitting next to; she had propped herself so far forward that there was next to no room in front of her. Every time I wanted to stand up to get something out of my daypack she refused to stand so I had to press my way in front of her. On one ocassion, as a manner of expressing my discontent I gave her a faceful of gas.
16:47 Yustina gasped as we wound our way down the ugly near barren East Andes. The west Andes are granite, this side is shale, sedimentary mud. "Carro!", sure enough around the bend we just passed deep down the side of the mountain is a bus, smashed, I'm sure nobody came out of that alive. "Condor!", sure enough, a big Andean Condor soared on a 12 foot wingspan, on the thermals of the valley a dozen yards from our window.
These girls are bound for home, Rio de Janeiro. Ahh Argentine, no wonder they are so friendly and much better looking than almost all of the Bolivians. I contemplate the masterpiece of a perfect form.
I pulled out my computer and showed them pictures of my travels, they loved everything in Peru. A man got out of his seat and took a picture of the old lecher flirting with two very young women.
16:52 Piss break. Most guys just piss on the road. One particularly modest man walks down the road around the bend and uses the road down the hill. The women use a stone roofless building that must be particularly nasty inside as most leave the building and go behind it apparently prefering the open ground.
17:15 We are stopped behind a gas truck. The bus is turned off. Everybody got out. I walked for 15 minutes past a score of vehicles down the road several turns and saw a backhoe clearing large amounts of shale from the road. As I examined the rock it was clear to me that this was not an avalanche; this rock had not cleaved of its own accord; it had been pulled from the face by the backhoe. As I went further down the road I saw the backhoe in action and the situation became evident. The shoulder of the road had collapsed and they were widening the road to accommodate the width of a vehicle.
I noticed that the shale layers lay at a sixty degree angle to the horizontal. I surmised that this was not tectonic subduction but rather volcanic in origin. I must be right as there is no knowledgeable person to dispute me. I'll have to look it up when I get an internet connection.
18:25 We are off.
18:35 More road repair. Another stop. Yustina tells me that the town in which I got my backpack out was Huanuco.
20:30 The girls want my email address I can't imagine why, they speak next to no English and I next to no Spanish. TODO Tells me that "Your house is here." I replied "Mi Casa no aqui." She laughed heartily again, I had been keeping her laughing for about seven hours now. Watching here firm ample breasts shake as she laughed was all the payment I needed. "Your hotel here." Oh, I should get off, get a hotel and find a bus in the morning. I said "ciao" but they insisted on giving me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and I said "Nuestro Hotel." (Our hotel) but they laughed and said I should see them in Rio.
As I started to walk across the street looking for a taxi an Indian women came running over to me "Tupiza, Tupiza, Tupiza, Tupiza, Tupiza" and pointed at a bus on the other side of the road. I asked the attendant next to the bus in my spectacular spanish, "Este bus hasta Tupiza?". "Si." I gave him my backpack which he placed in storage without giving me a claim ticket. I boarded the bus and stood on the stairs with nowhere to go, others came behind me forcing the people ahead of me to move. I finally made it up to the top; the bus was moving. I must have made a hell of a face as people started laughing trying to be discrete about it. There were no seats available, I couldn't even make my way down the aisle as it was jammed with passengers. I put my daypack down behind me and grabbed the rails as the bus lurched. The aisle was too narrow to put my feet shoulder width apart, the huge indian woman ahead of me sat down, most of here enormous bulk spreading into the area near the spiral staircase down to the door. I had about 15 inches of room for my feet which were eight inches apart. This is how I was to spend the next three hours, presuming this damn bus ran on schedule and the girls knew what they were talking about.
22:56 Tupiza. Thank god that is over with. Thirty eight f...ing hours. I went to a hostel recommended by Lonely Planet but it was locked up and nobody answered the buzzer. I had the driver take me to Hotel Mitru, the premier hotel in town. There was but one room left in the Cactus Region, the renovated part of the hotel. My room was 100 bs, damn expensive for Bolivia, around 14 USD. When I got to my room I saw why they called it the Cactus region, the shelves, desk, chair and headboard were all built out of cactus wood. The very expensive room was about the price of a twenty foot square piece of dirt in the camping site of a state park in the US. The room had excellent beds, a private bath, hot and cold water and a TV. Hard to complain.
I headed out down the street for dinner, grabbed a veggie pizza came to my room and collapsed in bed to tired to care that I was alone.
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