Busing it... (warning, another long winded travel disaster tale :)
"Any true offbeat Bolivian adventure will involve many vaired modes of transport - and at least one breakdown or road blockade..." Lonely Planet Bolivia
Having spent the last two weeks in Sucre learning Spanish, I was ready for a break and gladly tagged along with an English guy from my hostel for a weekend trip to Santa Cruz and Samaipata. He was particularly interested to visit the nearby site of El Fuerte, a mysterious Inca Ruin, which the arthur Erich von Daniken proclaimed to be a takeoff and landing ramp for ancient aircrafts.
When I saw the estimated travel time from Sucre to Santa Cruz was 16 to 24 hours, I was a little hesistent. However apparently the road has improved since then, and the trip is now only a 14 hour night busride away.
We started the trip at 5:30pm on Thursday afternoon. All was well.. Then about 2 hours into the trip the bus stopped in the middle of the mountain road. I thought it was for a toilet break, as most buses in Bolivia don´t have toilets. Most people got off, and went to the toilet, and stayed outside the bus.. Half an hour later we started to wonder about the length of this toilet break, and saw that there are other parked buses in front and behind us. Another half an hour later, we heard a rumour that there were campesinos (indigenous peasants and farmers) blocking the road.. This is a popular form of protest in Bolivia, though noone seems to know what the issue was this time. It was pretty hard for my friend and I to figure out what was going on as neither of our spanish was good enough to catch passing comments.
Several hours later, someone ran into the bus and said that we are going to turn around and return to a nearby town for the night, and then leave again in the morning. He also mentioned something about paying 2 Bolivianos for the museum in town.. but latter part didn´t make much sense to us, as it was already about 9pm at night.
Soon, the bus started moving, and we were expecting the bus to turn around any moment, but it didn´t. My friend saw a stack of rocks at the side of one of the road, and finally concluded that the blockade was due to a landslide, not a protest.
The bus happily chucked along for another hour or so, and then stopped again. I looked out the window and saw people trying to change the back tire. It seemed to take an awful long time and I fell asleep about half an hour later...
When I opened my eyes hours later, I noticed we were stationary again. Then it drawned upon me that we haven't moved at all since the tire brokedown... Started to worry, then saw another "Bolivan" bus behind us. That was our bus company and we thought it was the replacement bus from Sucre. Soon, someone came up the bus and said "Intercambio!", meaning "Exchange!" and everyone quickly gathered their belongings and got off the bus.
Waiting outside, we watched as people from the other bus got off their bus and onto ours. We quickly got on their bus, wondered what had happened, and prayed for the bus to start again. It was about 3am at the time, and the new estimated arrival time at Santa Cruz would be something like 2pm instead of 7am in the morning, provided that the bus leaves straight away.
Before we realised, more people started to board the bus. They were the people who have just got off the bus, realising that they were changed onto a defective bus, weren´t very happy, and wanted their bus back. Apparently they were traveling in the opposite direction, heading towards Sucre.. the bus drivers must have decided to switch buses because we were closer to Sucre and perhaps thought the defective bus would be able to get the people there.
There were a few loud arguements between people from the two buses. People our bus not wanting to leave and the original people (ie. the from the other bus) getting on and having a stand off. This lasted for almost two hours, and finally some of the original people got off, and the bus started moving. Again, my friend and I didn´t understand what was happening or why the few original people on the bus didn´t seem upset that we were heading towards Santa Cruz.
Our confusion lasted for about 20 minutes. The bus stopped at a small village, and people from our bus all got off. I guess they had agreed to transport us to the village and let us wait here. It was about 5am in the morning and it was freezing. We took refuge in the local bus cafeteria, and they served us tea and burgers.
After the sun had risen, people started to wander about town. We were guessing what time the replacement bus would arrive.. initially we had hoped in just a couple of hours time, that was if the driver had called the company as soon as they realised that they can´t fix the problem. After a while we revised the estimate to about 11am.
The town is very small but charming in its own way. By about 10:30 there was still no sight of the bus, and since it´s only a one steet town, my friend and I decided to go for another walk. We walked one way to where the shops are, and then turned back to the restaurant.. saw everyone still waiting outside.. then continued to walk down the street for another 5 minutes or so. When we walked back towards the restaurant we were shocked to see that everyone had gone except for the four girls working there. They saw our looks of surprise and couldn´t stop laughing.
Still not knowing what had happened (we were walking in the direction of Sucre and the bus would have passed us in order to get to the others - it was impossible that we missed a bus in the open daylight!), the restuarant helped us to get a taxi to catch up with the bus. Soon, we arrived at where the bus was parked. Everyone was waiting outside, eating ice blocks or biscuits, and the bus was in fact still being fixed, and was parked outside the local mechnic.
I guess the bus must have made its way to the mechanic while we were still in the cafeteria, and with its gate shut, we never realised that the bus was already in town. While we were walking around, someone must have come and told everyone where the bus was and to walk there. At least we didn´t miss seeing a bus in the open daylight!
Anyway, we were finally on our way by 12pm, and were on the bus for an infinitely long time, on the windy mountain roads. My friend and I decided to go straight to Samaipata instead of Santa Cruz, thus saving 3 hours of the traveling time. If everything had gone as planned it would have taken 11 hours for the trip, and as it happened, we got there just after 8pm on Friday night, so it took almost 28 hours...
We were pretty dead by the time we reached Samaipata, but it was a beautiful and tranquil town, perfect for not doing too much. We did venture to see the mysterious El Fuerte the next day, and to the Cloud Forest at Amboro National Park the following day. The scenery was so green and mountaineous... and we had a very good guide and translator (from RoadRuner tours) on the forest trip to explain about the medicinal use of plants and the different birds we saw. It was a wonderful trip and almost worth the dreadful busride...
posted by Susan @ 1:22 PM
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