Bolivia: The Epic Saga
Bolivia has definitely been mind blowingly amazing. It’s been a dichotomy between the extreme highs of the things I’ve done and seen and the people I’ve been lucky enough to surround myself with, and the extreme lows of Bolivian transport.
Bolivia began with Sophie and I trying to make our way from Cusco (in Peru) to Copacabana (in Bolivia). This began innocently enough with us buying our tickets (the cheapest of course) the morning we wanted to leave. We returned to the bus station later that evening at the specified time, only to discover that the departure time of the bus was now going to be an hour and a half later than we thought, and no one was planning on telling us. This is not all that unusual, so we went with it. The fun started when the bus finally arrived and we discovered that the time was not the only thing they had changed. According to our new tickets, we were going to be traveling with a different bus company, paid a different price, had different seats not together, and best of all we may or may not have to change buses at the border, depending whom you asked. Not all that surprised, we got on our bus and endured a screaming toddler for the next 7 or so hours until reaching Puno. At this point, we were apparently telepathically instructed to exit the bus and find our new bus. What no one told the driver is that telepathy is not a reliable method of information transfer. As things seem to, it all worked out. Despite the frustration, screaming children, and a mouth breather sleeping with his face aimed mouth first at my nose and ear, the universe gave us what it new was best. We climbed aboard our new bus which was mostly filled with other travellers heading to Bolivia. We noticed that the family of Kiwis we had previously met in Colca Canyon were on the bus. And joy of joys, they offered us Nutella sandwiches. I don’t think they understood or were prepared for the reaction that followed. If you have never been to South America, understand that a small jar of Nutella is the price of two nights in a hostel, and is therefore rarely purchased. In addition to the glory of Nutella, we also met Eugene, an Aussie with Kiwi roots, and decided to adopt him, at least for Copacabana. We reached the border and discovered that trying to run in a downpour 100 m at an extreme altitude does nothing but instantly wind you and then you end up soaked anyway. Dripping wet, but stamped passports in hand, we all got back on the bus and headed into Copacabana.
Copacabana itself was a cute little town with a constant line of new cars all covered in flowers and champagne, waiting to be blessed by a priest who comes through on the weekends. With one functioning ATM and almost nonexistent internet, Copacabana started Bolivia off with a bang. The highlight of Copacabana was definitely Isla del Sol. If you’re looking for what you should do in Copacabana, skip the Bolivian floating islands (or should I say tiny rafts) and head instead to Isla del Sol for a couple of nights, but definitely don’t forget your sunscreen and flashlight. We went to the island for New Years and spent one night on the south side, and one night on the north side. On the south side, definitely don’t miss the restaurant Las Velas. To get to it you have to hike through a eucalyptus grove, but it’s definitely worth the effort. By far the restaurant with the best view and the best pizza in South America (or at least so far, but it sure will be hard to top). Don’t forget your flashlight though, because it gets dark quicker than you think, and the island has little to no electricity, and as a result gets extraordinarily dark.
The hike to the North side of the island is actually quite lovely despite the lack of oxygen at altitude, especially when you are being guided by an adorable dog, and hop into a tiny boat to skip the last part of it. The north side is where we celebrated New Years. The beach was full of Argentinians camping and New Years was, as most are, a wine fuelled epically good time. There were bonfires, fake Spanish on my part, I adopted a tiny dog for the night, and a general sense of love and jubilation.
Transport to and from the island consisted of a boat (though that term might be stretching it) that left when it was full. The journey back to Copacabana was pretty interesting. We were sold our ticket by a gentleman who was clearly still enjoying the previous night’s festivities. We then clamoured onto the top of the boat via a ladder that we discovered, to our delight, had rusted and was therefore no longer actually attached to the boat. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a 3 hour boat ride while someone blasts death metal music and you are, it’s safe to say, hung over. If you haven’t yet, my suggestion is to avoid that. Especially if you are bound to get back to town and discover that every single restaurant is either no longer serving the food they have signs for, closed, or have run out of food.
The journey to La Paz is not too long, but it sure was interesting. We hopped on a local mini bus, and assumed everything would be as per usual, i.e. Crowds, mysterious liquids spilling on you, animals licking your feet, babies chillin in blankets on their mothers backs, etc. Don’t fret, we were not completely without animals. A very obliging Bolivian woman was kind enough to put her 8 open containers of fish under the bus with our bags. And we then proceeded to drive along what would seem to the untrained to be dirt roads, but I later found out the true meaning of a dirt road. Amazingly, we still seem able to be surprised. Such as this time when the bus just stopped, everyone got out and the bus drove onto a barge like this was completely normal. So we followed the crowd (as any good traveler would) and got into a motorboat to cross a mysterious body of water, and then followed the crowd back onto the bus. Why would anyone ever think their bus ride should consist of just a bus? When we arrived in La Paz at a very clearly marked terminal (aka the side of the road in the middle of nowhere), we found that our bags seemed to have exited the bus without us, and once again, the driver seemed to believe that telepathy would make us aware of this fact. Surprisingly, telepathy didn’t work, but our constant vigilance when it comes to our bags (otherwise known as our worldly possessions) did.
As a generalization, I dislike big cities. La Paz was no exception, but it was definitely interesting. Sophie and I tried to join the party backpacker scene and stay at Wild Rover. That was a definite mistake. But then again, when the attraction for that night’s party is a tattoo artist, you get the feeling they want you to make some bad decisions. After a few noisy and sleepless nights, we had had enough, and we’re ready to head to Uyuni. Despite it’s cities, La Paz did have one or two things going for it. It had a pretty cool witches market (who doesn’t need a shrivelled llama fetus every once in a while), we met up with Eugene there, and I managed to survive Death Road. If you haven’t heard of Death Road, don’t worry, I hadn’t either. Turns out it’s a mountain biking experience where you bike for about 4 hours, descend about 3000 m, and travel about 64 km. The death part comes halfway through when you leave the high speed, windy, rainy Tarmac that you can’t see more than a metre ahead of yourself, and bike on a gravel/dirt road about 3 m wide and quite twisty with a 400 m cliff side drop on your left, and no guardrails. If that doesn’t sound like enough, you will periodically be biking through waterfalls and rivers, don’t you fret. Despite what it sounds like, it’s actually a lot of fun and quite beautiful. I went with Barracuda, mainly because they were the cheapest without a dodgy reputation. We arrived, got our gear, gave an offering of ethanol to Pachamama (she’s such a lush), and were given our number one rule “Don’t be a fucking idiot”. All in all, it was a pretty amazing day, spent with some amazing people.
The bus ride from La Paz to Uyuni was probably the most memorable of them all. It began with us all getting herded from one end of the bus terminal to the other like cattle, towards two identical buses, without anyone ever checking tickets. Somehow we managed to get on the correct bus, find our seats and relax, chat, read, whatever we do on buses to keep ourselves occupied for our theoretically 12 hours on the bus. When the lights abruptly turn off, we take that as our cue to go to sleep (or a facsimile of sleep) until they are abruptly and inexplicably turned on again a few hours later. We roll with this new state of full light, assuming it’s just another one of Bolivian transport’s many quirks, and even manage to doze off again. We have some inexplicable quick stops along the way, where we assume our stuff is being auctioned off to the highest bidder, but we always carry on driving a few minutes later so we think nothing of it. Perhaps we should have taken those as warning signs, because at about 2 am we stop on the side of the highway, and find ourselves locked inside the bus with no one telling us why we have stopped. Two hours later we somehow find out that the battery has died and we now must wait for a new one. Two hours after this, we finally get a new battery, hooray. Our driver decides that he feels bad and wants to make up for lost time, so he abandons the desert road in favour of off roading. I don’t know if you are aware, but buses in Bolivia are not four wheel drive vehicles, they’re barely even paved road worthy. What ends up happening when you off-road with a bus that is about to fall apart is an interesting phenomenon. It starts with getting stuck in some of the many lakes the bus attempts to drive through and then having to be dug out with a shovel by the driver. It then continues to be the worlds worst massage chair, feeling like you are strapped in to an out of control massage chair that is trying to kill you. For six hours. Our scrambled brains were only kept sane by playing the always fun game of what will be vibrated out of the overhead compartments next, and on whom will it fall? This game is most fun when you are the winner of bags, water bottles, snacks, garbage, or anything else you can think of. Once the overhead compartments are empty, it becomes apparent that they are barely attached to the roof of the bus, and so the passengers take it upon themselves to hold it up with their hands. We all start to get used to the jostling, but every so often we seem to find a large bump that sends everyone flying into the air with a collective sound of surprise. 17 hours after we embarked on the 12 hour bus ride, we arrive in Uyuni, shocked that we are alive and vibrating slightly. We also learn an important lesson: when you drive through lakes in a bus that is falling apart, the bags under the bus may get wet. Very wet.
Uyuni itself was an enigma. It’s a town built for tourists to start the salt flats tour and as such is entirely reliant on tourists, yet at the same time actively despises these tourists, and doesn’t try to hide that. We got off to an interesting start, us and Uyuni. We managed to find the only cheap hostel in the city, and pretty quickly discovered that they deem it unnecessary to change their sheets between guests. For one night we decided we could live with that, and would just sleep fully clothed. Our next snafu came when we went to find out about tours to the salt flats. Turns out that because we got there during the rainy season the tours were way more expensive because the cars need constant servicing. Turns out that driving through a few feet of saltwater is hard on a vehicle. But this was what we came for, so we sucked it up and spent the money.
I don’t even know how to begin describing the salt flats tour. I could barely believe it was real, and I was there. We chose to do the three day tour. Sophie, Eugene, and I were joined in our car by a pair of Aussies and a Bolivian woman. First stop was the train graveyard. At this point Sophie and I went photo crazy and started climbing all over everything, and discovered that the Aussies were actually not a couple and didn’t appreciate being asked to kiss for a cute photo (thanks Soph for discovering their status as siblings in one of the most spectacularly awkward ways possible). The photo madness continued, much to the dismay of our driver, when we arrived at the salt flats. There are no words, so instead here are a bunch of pictures. None of these are photoshopped. We finished the first day with dinner and the Bolivian woman becoming the mama of our car and singing us to sleep.
Day two continued the mind blowing sights with some giant rocks that we managed to climb around on, some lakes that we managed to walk in to, and a red desert that looked more like mars than earth. Oh, and I managed to somehow sink into quicksand a miraculous three times. I did save my shoes though, so it worked out fine.
Day three began far too early, drove us to geysers at sunrise, then a thermal bath at an insane altitude, and through more lakes and desert all the way to Chile. We said goodbye to the Aussies who were continuing in to Chile, and got back in the car, thoroughly exhausted and still trying to process all the insane things we had seen, and headed back to Uyuni, to try and make it out before Dakar started and the president of Bolivia showed up.
Prepare yourself to join me on yet another glorious Bolivian bus ride. This one takes us from Uyuni to Sucre. Due to the Dakar race, and the Bolivian president heading to Uyuni, we had to leave our bus booking to the tour agency. This meant that we had no control, and I have now learnt that it is best to book things yourself. While waiting for the bus we discover, much to our chagrin, that the tiny bus we had laughed at was actually to be our bus, at least until we switched in Potosi to a real sized bus. So we load our bags under the bus (an impressive feat considering the bags were each as large as the storage area), and climbed aboard. Picture yourself in a slightly fancier yellow schoolbus, where each seat has an armrest between the “cushions”, but the vinyl and inability to recline still existed. And we hit arctic temperatures. I’m talking snowstorms and ice in the bus. The nice part was the back row was empty, and quickly became my attempted sleeping area. We reached Potosi, and the big bus we were promised turned out to be vans that we piled into. Cozily squeezed in together, we started driving at 1 am, when the driver decided that this was the best time to blast mariachi music. For hours. To add to this there was an un scheduled stop for car troubles, the exact nature of which we were not made privy to. At 5 am we arrived in Sucre to a plethora of crotch scratching, pot bellied taxi drivers vying for our business. We chose the least offensive of these men and were on our way.
Sucre was a week of glorious nothing. We walked around, talked to people, made food, and generally enjoyed the garden of our hostel, and it’s accompanying accordion playing French artists. Pachamama (our beautiful hostel) gave us exactly what we needed and simultaneously didn’t need: a place to settle and relax. We could have stayed there forever, but sometimes you’ve just got to move forward (especially when you only have a 30 day visa). So we headed out of Sucre, stopping only long enough to eat one last bit of deep fried chicken from a hamburger shop, and steeled ourselves for yet another bus trip.
We honestly thought we had beat the system on this one. We chose the panoramic seats, thinking we would have tons of leg room and wouldn’t have to fear our stuff would be stolen by people around us. The bus did in fact have much leg room, as well as some classy decorations. We realized our mistake as the bus took off, driving along a dirt highway, the aisles lined with people sleeping on the floor, and we had a front row seat for all the things we were sure meant certain death. These included: cliff edges, rock slides, and playing chicken with everything. Cars, trucks, buses, people, bikes, sheep, dogs, cows, and actual chickens. We were given a bathroom break, which was handy. The fact that the bathroom was also the field in which the bus was parked didn’t seem to phase us at this point. Needless to say, when we were offered the option of leaving the bus 3 hours sooner by going to Samaipata instead of Santa Cruz, we said yes.
Samaipata turned out to be a great little town devoid of things like internet or ATMs, but filled with a market, a weird used clothing street sale, an amazing Mexican restaurant, and one of the best hostels yet. This may have been our best week of nothing. El Jardin was exactly what you would expect. A giant garden with mud hut looking dome buildings that we lived in. We spent our days lying around and reading, every so often venturing out of the hostel to the tiny town that lay beyond (but really only when we needed snacks). We did manage to find our way to some waterfalls nearby, and by good luck happened to arrive at the falls on a national holiday, along with the rest of Bolivia. Our taxi to the falls was pretty standard in quality. Sellotape window, being handed the handle to roll down the other window, trunk tied shut. Nothing too unusual.
Samaipata though had a bittersweet edge. This was to be our last week all together. After months together, we were parting ways. We put off actually saying goodbye, but as we waited for the collectivo to Santa Cruz (which we later learned stops in a different part of town despite having asked) we knew what was coming.
After a few stressful and sweaty hours at the Santa Cruz bus station, we finally reached the moment we had all been dreading. It was time to wish each other luck and head to our separate buses. Hugs, tears, and promises to see each other again out of the way, I boarded my 36 hour (or 44 hours in reality) bus to Buenos Aires, and spent the rest of the evening in a state somewhere between crying and sleeping. Sometimes travel bites the big one, even when it’s amazing.
