wacky transport day

hello everyone! let me tell you about our wacky transport day. it was one of those days where you spend most of it thinking, ¨boy we are definitely not in australia right now¨.

after la paz, we decided to go to a little town called coroico, a few hours and about 1500m down the mountain. most gringos do this journey by taking a mountain bike tour down ¨the world´s most dangerous road¨ but Lion wasn´t keen and I couldn´t be bothered so we just took the bus.

the ¨bus station¨ was apparently in a suburb of la paz called villa fatima, so we took a taxi. (you can´t fit on a bolivian bus with a backpack.) the taxi driver drove reasonably smoothly, except that at one point he took a wrong turning and thus decided to reverse approximately two blocks to get back to the turning. the rest of the traffic didn´t seem too impressed, but then again people honk for no apparent reason pretty much constantly here so maybe they didn´t mind?

(as an aside, it´s ridiculously cheap and fast to get a taxi in south america at any time, in any location. what´s wrong with our home city that taxis are so difficult?)

anyway, the bus station was an old service station that had been gutted out, and the buses were an eclectic collection of minibuses with cramped seating, each with a very pushy little old lady (bolivia does pushy old ladies VERY well) racing around the grounds yelling the destination and price of their minivan. as we arrived in the midst of this in our taxi, we were not even out of the car when we were accosted by about seven of these ladies yelling, ¨COROICO AMIGA? QUINCE BOLIVIANOS AMIGA! CORIOCO AMIGA? EN ESTE MOMENTO AMIGA¨

this kind of aggressive salesmanship happens almost everywhere in bolivia, and it´s not just targeted at gringos (well, maybe a bit more at gringos sometimes, but the minibus ladies yell at EVERYONE) - so we are a bit used to it now. however, as we were standing there with our packs surrounded by all these ladies I realised they all a foot shorter than us, and so rather than feeling confronted I couldn´t help finding the whole thing a bit funny.

anyway, we chose our Señora (pretty much randomly), and the driver strapped our packs to the top of the minibus as I watched nervously and wondered if they would make it to Coroico (they did), and then we piled in and waited.

Señora, who had assured us that the van was full and that it would be leaving ¨in este momento¨ (i.e. right away) ran off to recruit more customers. I wasn´t that surprised. (the minibuses don´t really have a departure time, they just leave when they are full of people. this works well in a busy city like la paz. however catching the minibus on a slow day, we later discovered, can be a loooong process). luckily, it didn´t take her long to find passengers this time, so when finally the microbus was nice and uncomfortably full we departed.

Lion was sitting in the front, on the gearbox, between the driver and a bolivian man whom (she would later discover) was bus-narcoleptic and kept falling asleep on her shoulder. to his credit though, he held her guitar for her. being in the front, she got a nice view of the driving style, which consisted of the driver crossing himself and muttering a short prayer each time he went to overtake. (but he was a pretty good driver really, most of the time he only drove on the wrong side of the road when there was nothing else coming.)

thus we headed out of the city (past a seedy love motel called ¨hotel paraíso, 24 horas entrada¨), and through a police checkpoint. every police checkpoint in bolivia is accompanied by rows and rows of stalls selling biscuits, drinks, fried chicken etc. the sellers come up to the bus window, holding armfuls of stuff they think you might want. or, as we discovered from watching everyone else, you can also shout your order to them. then they will race back to the stall and grab the bottle of water or whatever and try to get back to the bus before it departs again.

a group of young bolivian guys on our bus asked for a bottle of coke, but they were a little late about it and our bus started to take off just as the señorita passed the bottle through the window (and before they´d paid her). so she had to run after us, and the bus was through the checkpoint by then so they had to ask the driver to stop. ¨un momento, no pagé la señorita!¨. no, mate, you didn´t! by the time she had caught up to the bus she was pretty pissed off and NOT impressed by their fumbling around for change, which they still hadn´t found. ¨cinco bolivianos POR FAVOR!¨ she said again (not very politely despite the ¨por favor¨), rolling her eyes and panting.

anyway, then we were finally off onto the highway. Lion and I had heard it was going to be a four-hour trip, so we were pleased to see a sign that said it was only 82km to Coroico. ¨great!¨ we said to one another, ¨it won´t be far at all!¨ however, we were less reassured when the next sign said 97km. and then when the next sign (about five minutes down the road) said 60km, we started thinking maybe something wasn´t quite right. from here, the signage went back to 80km, down to 40km, back up to 65km, down to 40km, back up to 45km, and then was still saying 40km twenty minutes later.

the journey took two and a half hours, in the end. I still have no idea how far it was.

the most humourous thing about this journey for me (there were a lot of competitors) was the narcotics checkpoint. we saw the sign indicating we´d be reaching such a checkpoint in 500 metres, and looked at each other worriedly (NOT because we were carrying any drugs... we just weren´t looking forward to the wait, and having our backs searched, etc). but that happened was that the driver passed a list of the passengers´ names (which had never, at any point, been checked against any kind of ID) and the minibus sailed on through.

pretty sweet huh? be nice if customs in Australia was that easy!

we have since been through this checkpoint a second time, and I swear that what I saw was the ¨narcotics officer¨ passing a big yellow envelope to the driver, rather than the other way round? nooo idea what was going on there.

anyway now we are in Coroico, safe and sound! and it is lovely. it is in the Yungas, which is a mountain range covered in green sub-tropical rainforest complete with hummingbirds and big colourful butterflies and stunning views and a very, very cold river. there are all kinds of other stories to tell about Coroico but I am out of time. we went for a hike on lion´s birthday yesterday, which was quite difficult and also quite stunning.

anyway now I have to go and meet our new friend from the netherlands for dinner. maybe soon we will go on a three-day hike. good times!

hope you are all well!! xxx