Bolivia - *Travel Special Part 2*

Another travel special already? ¿Que Loco? Like I said at the bottom of the last post, the journey to Tarija was something else. I think it merits it's own special and there's no better time than the present - it's all still fresh in my memory although I don't think I'll be forgetting a second of this one anytime soon!

 

It all begins in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The day before departure we took a stuffed micro bus (and they really mean micro - think a Ford Transit van, split it down the middle and cut a quarter off the back) to the Bimodal bus / train station. It was actually not such a bad place as you'd imagine for a developing nation, although I'm from Hull, so my homegrown standards of a bus or train station are not very high. We wandered for half an hour or so, looking at the various booths to see where each company departed to. Not one of them said Tarija. The hustlers pounced on our wandering eyes. As we walked up and down they constantly asked where we wanted to go; we told them, they gave us a price to Yacuiba - remember the border town from the last post? - and from there to Tarija as there was apparently no direct service. The prices didn't seem too bad, considering I had paid 80 Bolivanos to get here, but still.. surely there was another cheaper way around it. We checked the train, but that only went twice a week to Yacuiba and not on a Thursday. In the end we gave up and headed back to the Resdencial to check out my South America map to see if there was better connections through another city.

 

The map didn't give us the answers required.. although very clear, unfortunately it is still made of paper, and even me, "Mr Gadget", didn't bring a map that advanced! We decided we would just head down to the bus station an hour and a half before we wanted to leave (the next day) and work it out then. With nothing better to do we headed to another place Amanda had found, which served quite possibly the best Jugo de Banana con Leche in Bolivia, if not the world. One was simply not enough, if it'd been on tap, I think we'd still have been sat there now. That evening, in the absence of anything else we took the Lonely Planet advice for Santa Cruz and headed for a pizza restaurant, which naturally meant it was a gringo haven - at least 25 of them sat round one table, and I think I counted 3 Bolivians. The pizza was "passable with care" and the salad was not too bad, at least it was food I guess and I was able to eat it!

 

So Thursday came around. We had already decided we would get a night bus so would head down to the station around 4:30. Before this, we headed back to our "Jugo Hangout", but disaster had struck - NO JUGOS!!!! We searched for more.. we found, we drank, we were... disappointed - none could match this one, slightly deaf, Bolivian lady's creation. In the end we gave up and headed to the market. Here Amanda decided she would embark on trying native food. A rather large Bolivian woman stood commandeering a large silver pan of goodness knows what. The plate came piled high with rice, beans and sausage (dyed black by the beans!). After a few tries Amanda realised the sausage was sausage and being vegetarian passed it to me. I was none too keen, but dared to take a bite of the sausage. A Bolivian woman opposite was creasing herself laughing at me as I pulled a funny face as it went in, then slowly realised that it was actually very tasty. I cleared half the mountain and off we went in search of more delicacies. We stopped at a cake stall on the outskirts of the market. The chocolate cake looked good, but taste more like something a dog had left behind. We tried to give it to beggars, but they just pushed it away and laughed.. obviously they knew this cake game all too well! In the end it went in the bin where it belonged.

 

We next stopped to look at a church and got talking to a Bolivian lady who was insistent to show us round a few other buildings, despite our lack of time and need to get the bus station. It was all very interesting, but fortunately she understood after the first one so we headed back to the hotel, picked up our luggage and headed to hustler central, pardon me.. the bus station. It really was "be hustled to you drop". After much searching, we settled for a ticket via Yacuiba for 75 Bolivanos each, it seemed a little dodgy though as when we got to Yacuiba we had to go and tell the ticket office there to give us a ticket for 30 Bolivianos to Tarija. We were in no mood to start arguing with the guy in the middle of the busy bus station, so we accepted. We had more Jugos (still not as good!) and headed down to the platform. The bus was supposed to leave at 18:30, but by 18:45 there was still no sign. We kept an eager eye out for our bags being carried out of the office to the bus. Finally the bus arrived at 18:50. We followed our bags to make sure they were on and took our seats. Despite fears that it was going to be freezing cold, it was the exact opposite - boiling. The bus left the station after a horn blowing match between the congested drivers at 19:30.

 

During the first couple of hours of the journey we attempted to open windows to relieve from some of the heat build up, but everytime we opened the window, it would be closed again a few minutes later by a Bolivian behind! They like riding on stinky, sweaty buses? Also to add to this, the people immediately behind us had four young children who would take it in turns to have a scream or cry. When the bus halted at two rest stops, these screams turned to "Papi, Papi", as there dad had got off to go to the toilet. Fair enough, I can understand this, but surely they could have been a little less deafening!

 

As the night wore on, thankfully other noise died down. Amanda was asleep, but I was awake more than asleep. Because of this, I knew everytime we stopped. It started to become very erratic. We would stop for 5 minutes at a rest station and then a few minutes down the road for 45 minutes. Would we reach Yacuiba in time for the connecting bus? At 6 AM, it all became clear. We had stopped down the road for no apparent reason since 5AM, and suddenly as daylight was starting to break, most of the population of the bus were gathering up all of there things. Had we broken down? Amanda woke and asked some people in front of us what was going on. ROAD BLOCKADE! For those of you not familiar with Bolivian current affairs, forget football, road blockades in protest at government policies is the national sport. We had to make a decision, either to sit it out on the bus or follow the herd down the road. Since I had spoken to someone in Uruguay that had been stuck on a bus for 10 days in one such blockade,  we decided to hop it. We leapt of the bus and turned to look down the road.. truck after truck after truck after truck as far as the eye could see was queued up on the left side of the road. Next to the trucks marched an exodus of people carrying all sorts of luggage. It really was something like out of a film.

 

We gathered our luggage.. or should I say, I gathered our luggage as a certain person was still sleepy. I managed my two bags, plus two of Amanda's - a true packhorse with 50kg around anywhere it would hang from! We had to stop every 200m or so for me to have a break as it was so hot even at 6:30AM.  Every 10 minutes or so a man or child with a wheelbarrow or cart would come past asking if we wanted them to push our luggage to town. Everytime we said no. One Bolivian man behind us succumbed and Amanda translated that his wife said "Come on lazy, how much are you going to pay for that?!". We were determined to do it without and eventually got to Villamontes, a town under siege - all roads in and out were subject to blockades.

 

Once in town we asked about how we could get out to get to either Yacuiba to get the connecting bus or if there was a road out direct to Tarija where we could hitch or get a Camion - a lorry with seats in the back. We decided on the latter and began the long walk up the road out of town. My shoulders began to feel the strain after 45 minutes of walking, so we had a reshuffle of bags and off we went. At the edge of town, salvation came in the shape of a Bolvian and a jeep. He offered us a ride to the frontier of the roadblock for 33p. As the ride went on, we were glad we took him up on the offer, the road winded 3km around, up and down a hill. Eager to find a ride, we crossed the roadblock and wandered down the long line of lorries looking for a driver to take us the rest of the way as neither of us were feeling like a further 250km walk. Sandwiched between two trucks was a taxi complete with driver. Amanda asked him about the journey, which he said would take 7 hours and cost us a suspiciously good 50 Bolivianos - 4 pounds. Naturally we said we would take him up on the offer. The only catch was that he needed another passenger and this may take an hour or two as there were not many people crossing. We found some shade between another two trucks and made ourselves comfortable  - well as comfortable you can be sat on a red dirt road, in the boiling sun.    

 

Our taxi driver reappeared at 12 (midday!) along with another passenger. Our baggage was strapped to the top of the taxi and off we went. We thought he was joking when he said 7 hours, as looking on the map it didn't seem that far, but as the journey unfolded it became clear this would be correct. We travelled up and down and around tiny mountain roads, seeing beautiful mountain ranges from our window. The scenery was second to none of what I've seen so far. We had to stop a couple of times so he could fix tyres and once in a village as he had to change it. Here we were dropped off at a restaurant where we had cooked corn - a simple Campesino (Bolivian peasant) dish, which I actually found to be very nice and a toilet break. This for me was quite an interesting experience! The toilet had no flush and there was simply a big butt of water outside with buckets... Mother, you just wouldn't have known where to start with your Domestos and mop!

 

We were a little sceptical if the taxi driver would actually return from wherever he had gone to get his tyres fixed. Thankfully he did 30 minutes later with our luggage still strapped to the top. Off we went again, winding our way around more stunning mountains - (at every corner the driver had to honk the horn because one false move and we would have been skydiving without a parachute), past rural villages, across dusty desert like plateau and eventually to picturesque Tarija. We stepped out of the taxi slightly dusty, but nothing compared to our backpacks which had changed colour to fit in with the terrain. At this point we thought surely it was going to cost us more than 50 Bolivianos each considering it had actually taken 7 hours, but I handed over 100 for us both and he accepted with thanks! Surely this was going to be the cheapest taxi ride we ever got.. can you imagine going from London to Edinburgh for 4 pounds each??!! I think not.

 

So here is where the journey ended. We found a hotel for a reasonable rate and stayed for 2 days. It's a beautiful town and has a very relaxed feel. More about that in the next post when I return to the original format! Hopefully then I'll be able to catch up as we're now in Uyuni awaiting our jeep for a 4 day trek to the salt flats, which promises to be another adventure! Until then, adios!