True stories of Bolivia

I had just arrived to Bolivia and was checking my e-mail in an internet-café when a Peruvian friend asked me over the messenger if I was still staying in Peru.

”-No, I am in Bolivia”, I answered excitingly. I expected the normal reply, something like “-oh, you travel so much!” (most Peruvians have never been outside their country) but I was surprised to hear something else.

She said: “Oh, chaos!”

A bit weird, I thought. “Chaos, here?”.

“But you are from Peru, do you want me to tell you how much chaos I think your country is?”, remembering a certain journey back from Machu Picchu. “Maybe you should watch your mouth”. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I chose the diplomatic way, didn’t argue and just kept her opinion in mind, pretending that her country was as good as she wanted it to sound like.

Now, after having left Bolivia, I suddenly realised that this was the most accurate description of any country I’ve heard so far during my trip. When travelling in Bolivia, your patience will be severely tested and unless you are a super-cool guy (like me? ;), you will be better off preparing yourself with a couple of books on anger management. Don’t believe me? Ok, here are some stories from Bolivia. And they are true.

Nothing is on time - laundry
Nothing is on time in Bolivia. In fact, few things even have a time. The simplest task of only leaving your clothes at a laundry will get complicated when places don’t have opening times. It simply opens when the owner wakes up (or after getting ready) and they close randomly at any time they like. Maybe when they get hungry. I wanted to leave my clothes the last day before travelling and it was a pain in the arse to find a laundry that could guarantee that it was open this and this time for me to collect the clothes in the evening.

Nothing is on time - buses
Every single bus I have taken in the country has failed to depart on time, and even more so to arrive on time. Drivers like to wait at the bus stop a little bit longer for more passengers to arrive (as they get paid more that way). After a while, the passengers on board will get impatient and start whistling, shouting and banging the walls and windows of the bus to notify the driver that “now we want to leave you god'am idiot!” That is about the time when the driver starts the engine. Then he waits a couple of minutes more…

The only time something was on time
We had booked a tour departing in the morning at 7:30. At the hotel, breakfast starts at 7:00 so it was quite perfect – we thought. Until the breakfast lady decided to not wake up in time and stumbled in through the door at around 7:20. She started toasting breads and make tea and finally served the breakfast at 7:25. “-It doesn’t matter”, we said because the tour guys will probably pick us up late anyway. By this time we had learned the nature of Bolivia as you can imagine. But halfway into the bread and the cup of tea, the reception guy runs in at 7:29 saying that the tour guys are here. God damn it what I hate this place!

Difficult to leave
The day after touring the salt flats of Uyuni, I met a Danish guy on the bus station. He told me that he had tried to leave Uyuni for two days now but failed. The first day it was something about the trains being sold out. The second day he had arrived to the bus station with the ticket in hand at 7pm when the bus actually had left at 7am the same day, being misinformed. And now he was here again on the third day. We were booked on the same bus towards Tupiza to the south. I could sense something in the air.

Floods
The rain period in January-February shows no mercy. The flatlands south of Uyuni were filled with water and the bus finally had to make a halt in front of a river flowing over the road (they still haven’t figured out that it is easy to dig a culvert under the road instead of letting waterways flow over it, damaging the road). Four buses and a load of lorries soon stood in a queue waiting for the water level to go down. Two of the buses soon lost their patience and turned back to Uyuni - but not mine. After waiting three hours, the driver said that we should wait five hours more. If the water level didn’t go down before that, a bus should arrive on the other side from Tupiza and we could cross on foot (with water up to the waist) and change buses. It was a mad idea and some people who didn’t bring food or water soon got really upset; especially the old ladies who under no circumstances would cross the river on foot anyway. Finally, there was no bus arriving on the other side and the driver was forced to return with a bunch of angry passengers. But I would have crossed. Not to mention the Danish guy.

Reverse-gear is good to have
It also soon became evident why the driver had been so keen on not turning around, the bus had no reverse gear. In order to turn around in front of the river, on a quite narrow road, he had to mobilise a group of people who could push the bus backward several times. The bus’ turning radius was also very poor, making an even larger mess of the turnaround.

The falling bus
After completing the mission of turning the bus around, the driver managed to get stuck in the water-sick earth adjacent to the road. The inclination of the bus was startlingly high and if I didn’t know better, I would have thought that the bus ran a risk of falling over. “-But that never happen in reality”, I thought, laughing at the idea. Two German guys on the bus were however really devastated when they stood at the side of the road and looked at the pathetic sight of guys digging under the wheel with a shovel, the bus looking as it was about to fall over any second. The German guys said that only two days ago they had been on board a bus meeting that very fate. They showed me pictures of it in their digital camera. Amazing. And this time it was worse, they said. Because they had put their luggage in the side compartment and if the bus fell over on that side, they would probably not be able to retrieve their luggage for days (try to get the bus recovered in this area, yea right!) and they had a flight to catch. What an adventure, I could not stop thinking of the bus falling over. At that very moment the engine roared and the bus pulled loose. One could feel how the wheel almost left the ground for a moment but the bus managed to steer up on the road, hitting safer ground and the German guys could breathe normally again. It was good because I had my luggage in the same compartment...

Buying a house in Uyuni
Just before we turned around the bus, there was a jeep on the other side offering to take a few travellers. We quickly lined up and I was number eight in the queue with the Danish guy in front of me. It soon became evident that they only had six seats and me and the Danish guy were forced to return to Uyuni with the bus. He said: “-I really thought I had managed to leave Uyuni this time. I think I will have to buy a house here.”

Information problems
Back in the town of Uyuni, we were informed that the bus should make a new attempt at 7am the following morning. So it was time to start to look for a hostel for the night. Some people walked off while we remained around the bus company’s office for a while chatting. The driver of the second bus, which turned around together with us (they had the office just opposite the street), were convinced that the flood would be gone by night and said he would try to go in the night. Although our driver just a couple of minutes earlier had said that it was too dangerous to travel on that road in the night, he now changed his mind and wanted to follow the other bus (with half of the bus’ passengers unknowingly waiting for the morning departure!!) This gave us less than an hour to eat something and return to the bus. When we returned, both drivers had changed their mind again and departure was scheduled for the morning. But this time at 6am. In a way, I was relieved to not having to travel on a dark road through lonely wastelands of Bolivia in the middle of the night. Where rivers are flowing over the road. With a crazy bus driver. And in a bus without reverse gear.

If you can’t bargain them, threaten them!
So it was time to look for a hostel for the night. I left my luggage in the bus office and strolled away to find something better than the hostel I stayed it the previous night (where the shower didn’t work and there were no water in the taps! Yes, this is far from Manhattan guys.). In town I ran into the group with six people that set off on a jeep journey on the other side of the river. They told me that they had experienced coming to an even bigger river that was impossible to cross even with the jeep. And there was a damaged bridge. And there was an incident with a jeep driver injuring himself badly on the broken bridge. They said it looked almost impossible that the road would be clear for tomorrow morning. “Very worrying”, I thought and quickly considered my options. I did not like to play my chances and lose another day so I decided to get my money back from the ticket and buy a bus ticket for another direction on another road. Said and done, I went to the bus office again and asked for the money back. “We can offer your money back minus 20 bolivianos” (US$3), they said. I was annoyed because I was still in the same spot as I was when I purchased the ticket and I had lost a day. If they don’t give me the exact sum back, it would be logical to pay me ‘more’! I tried to bargain with minus 10 bolivianos but they seemed untouchable. "If you can’t bargain them, threaten them!”, I thought and took on a new approach. “What about you give me all my money back”, I said, “or I will make all my friends to ask for refunds as well”. I was alone in the bus company’s office.
The bitch in the ticket office looked angry, annoyed, old, ugly and incredibly stingy and didn’t give in for anything. So I finally gave up and took my money minus 20 bolivianos and exited the office. Best so, before she changed her mind to minus 30 bolivianos.

The evil revenge
Only a couple of minutes after I exited the office with my money minus 20 bolivianos, intending to look for another bus company, the jeep-group had arrived to the street. They spread their stories to other passengers and scared pretty much the shit out of everyone. Now everybody wanted a refund for their own tickets as they obviously didn’t believe in a trip in the morning. Rumours spread amazingly quick in such a small town. Practically every tourist on the bus (they were in majority to the locals) now stood outside the office wanting all their money back. I had said nothing but the angry lady spotted me amongst them (I was only making alternative plans with the others) and obviously thought I had launched my evil plan of making every backpacker ask for the money back. I got a dark glance as if it was from the devil itself, then she sat down, if possible even angrier, and started to pay back all the tickets. Minus 20 bolivianos.

Playing safe
It soon became evident that there were only two suitable alternatives; travel via Potosí either the same night (and sacrifice a night of sleep; already dead tired) or at 8-9 in the morning. I asked what the Danish guy was going to do (he was going in the morning) and therefore decided that I should take the night bus, convinced that all this mess was his fault. “If he can’t leave Uyuni, the bus tomorrow will certainly have some kind of problem”, I thought by myself and quickly hurried to the nearest Potosí bus office.

The disappearing train
Two new backpackers on the bus station told me that they were supposed to go on the train (lucky bastards, being able to get hold of train tickets!) but had been forced to change to bus. It was because no-one knew where the train was! It had left the station of origin but never arrived to the next expected place. And no one of the officials in the station knew what had happened or why it was gone. Such an amazing organisation they have here. This was hilarious but at the same time a bit unlikely and frightening. Have they not heard of radio in the train company? How safe it is really to travel in this country? I was at the time reading a Stephen King-book and had about a dozen ideas of what potentially could have happened with the train. But I guess no-one of them was actually the right one. Before I could get any more news from the train, I left the town. With the Danish guy behind me.

Double tickets
Also when waiting for the bus to Potosí, two backpackers came by trying to sell extra tickets to La Paz. No-one seemed interesting in buying them. The story tells that the two backpackers had heard from their agency that the train apparently didn’t function (another train this time) and that all passengers now went looking for bus tickets. Almost panicking, they set off to the bus station to buy bus tickets before they ran out. The next mission was to get refunds for the train tickets. At the station, they got to know that the train did in fact work and that no refunds were allowed. So they ended up with tickets for both bus and train. By the time I left, they were still desperately trying to get rid of a pair. My guess is that they failed because at this place, people buy the tickets early if they want to travel as last-minute travel always runs the risk of getting sold out. Ask the Danish guy if it’s true or not.