The joys of Bolivian buses...
Get up, check out, off to the bus station, the usual routine. No hostel breakfast this time, but I managed to get a couple of deep-fried potato-cake type things from a little old lady at the side of the road for the princely sum of 2 Bs each, so I was at least slightly prepared for what the day might bring. Most of our group reassembled (10 of the 11 on our tour were on the same bus!), and were less than 100% pleased when we found that the bus company had swapped the new, shiny bus we hd been shown the previous day for a little minibus, on whose roof all our packs were going to be travelling. I was even less impressed when I discovered that, following Murphy's Law, I, the largest person on the bus, was in the seat with the least legroom on the bus. So I would be spending the best part of 6 hours either killing my knees or swivelled around into the aisle. Lovely.
Still, the drive itself was pretty spectacular. If only the same could have been said for the road. The panormaic vistas of mountains along the side of which we snaked as we headed up towards Potosí were matched in size only by the size of some of the potholes in the road. Or at least it felt that way. I immersed myself in Lauren and Ness's Lonely Planet Bolivia for some of the trip, seeing what else it had to offer beyond what my trusty Footprint provided, and then curled up as best I could with my iPod to last out some of the rest of the trip (I was all out of books at this point, thwarted by the power-cut in San Pedro from hitting the book exchanges there). I awoke to our lunch stop, a proper little middle-of-nowhere with few options for food. I ended up getting a crushed corn cake known as a humita, as this was all the sole Boliviano I still had in small change would buy me - foolishly, I had used all my smaller notes and coins, and there was no way I was going to be able to get change for a 50 or 100 Bs note there! I then attempted to doze off again.
This time, I was awoken by us grinding to a halt. Turns out a bus in front of us had gone off the side of the road (luckily the rockface side, not the cliff-edge side) on a narrow climbing section, and everything was backed up behind it - both of its rock-side wheels had left the road and gone into the gully by the rock edge, so it was hanging diagonally across its suspension with no traction to get it out of there. All its passengers had disembarked and people were largely standing around trying to work out what might be done to get it out of there. In relatively short order, there were 4 minibuses all queued up behind it, and some of the Bolivian equivalent of the Highways Agency had turned up in a road-grader (it's a dirt/gravel road rather than tarmac on that route). We all seemed likely to be there for the duration until the driver of one of the trailing minibuses, whom I judged at the time to have more cojones than sense, decided to try and squeeze through the narrow gap on the cliff side of the grounded bus. And, against all expectations, and with someone hanging out the front door to tell him if his wheels were about to go over the edge, made it through. Obviously, as soon as it was shown that one bus could make it, all the others did so as well, including ours, so we were on our way for the loss of a bit under an hour, which wasn't too bad considering.
Hence, it was late afternoon when we arrived into Potosí, the highest city of its size in the world - 160,000 or so people at over 4,000m altitude. The reason for this is the mines of Cerro Rico, the "rich hill" whose silver mines effectively funded the Spanish Empire for 2 centuries or more. In fact, it had a similar population at the end of the 16th century, making it one of the largest cities in the world at that time. However, these riches were extracted at the cost of the misery, and indeed the lives, of around 8 million indigenous Andeans and African slaves who worked the mines over those years. After independence, the mines remained open and under state ownership until the 1980s, although the silver had largely gone by the latter parts of the 19th century, and their continued operation was largely due to demand for tin, which the Spanish had never been that bothered with. These days, the mines are still operated by Miners' Co-operatives, but they struggle to make a living, and work in conditions that, but for the use of dynamite for blasting, have scarcely changed from the Middle Ages. Tours to the mines are actually Potosí's biggest tourist attraction, but, given my claustrophobia when underground, one which I declined to partake in.
At any rate, on arrival, I was again to suffer for my having foolishly used up all my change and small notes, as I was unable to secure transport to my lodgings. Luckily, Jerome and Estelle let me share their taxi to their hostel, which brought me about halfway to mine and did quite a bit of the climb from the bus station to the town centre, but still left me gasping my way for another 10 minutes or so across town fully laden with my packs and wondering where all the oxygen had gotten to. Still, I made it, and checked into the La Casona hostel, which was handily only a block and a half away from the central Plaza. I had a brief initial wander around town before the restaurants started opening for the evening, at which point I went to the La Casona Pub (no relation to the hostel) where I tried some beautiful microbrewed beer from Ted's Cerveceria in Sucre and had pique de lengua (spicy tongue, with a salsa and some chuños, a local variety of freeze-dried potatoes!). After this, I caught up on more of my internet needs (as your Inboses can probably attest) before heading back to the pub for their live music that evening.
This turned out to be a local folclore group of 8 musicians called Waira, playing the classic Andean instruments (including the tiny guitar that's a bit like a ukelele and the ubiquitous pipes and flute). For a cover charge of around 1 pound, they played a couple of sets of great music, and I had a very pleasant time, chatting with the bar staff (who all appeared to be from the same family, apart perhaps from one of the waiters who easily wins the prize of the campest Latin American I have yet met) and later with another English lad called Andy (from Hull) and a French lad called Marceau - they were heading on to Uyuni the next day, so I sang the praises of Estrella del Sur (whilst warning they could be tricky to get hold of!). And then it was time to go back to the hostel and sleep.
Still, the drive itself was pretty spectacular. If only the same could have been said for the road. The panormaic vistas of mountains along the side of which we snaked as we headed up towards Potosí were matched in size only by the size of some of the potholes in the road. Or at least it felt that way. I immersed myself in Lauren and Ness's Lonely Planet Bolivia for some of the trip, seeing what else it had to offer beyond what my trusty Footprint provided, and then curled up as best I could with my iPod to last out some of the rest of the trip (I was all out of books at this point, thwarted by the power-cut in San Pedro from hitting the book exchanges there). I awoke to our lunch stop, a proper little middle-of-nowhere with few options for food. I ended up getting a crushed corn cake known as a humita, as this was all the sole Boliviano I still had in small change would buy me - foolishly, I had used all my smaller notes and coins, and there was no way I was going to be able to get change for a 50 or 100 Bs note there! I then attempted to doze off again.
This time, I was awoken by us grinding to a halt. Turns out a bus in front of us had gone off the side of the road (luckily the rockface side, not the cliff-edge side) on a narrow climbing section, and everything was backed up behind it - both of its rock-side wheels had left the road and gone into the gully by the rock edge, so it was hanging diagonally across its suspension with no traction to get it out of there. All its passengers had disembarked and people were largely standing around trying to work out what might be done to get it out of there. In relatively short order, there were 4 minibuses all queued up behind it, and some of the Bolivian equivalent of the Highways Agency had turned up in a road-grader (it's a dirt/gravel road rather than tarmac on that route). We all seemed likely to be there for the duration until the driver of one of the trailing minibuses, whom I judged at the time to have more cojones than sense, decided to try and squeeze through the narrow gap on the cliff side of the grounded bus. And, against all expectations, and with someone hanging out the front door to tell him if his wheels were about to go over the edge, made it through. Obviously, as soon as it was shown that one bus could make it, all the others did so as well, including ours, so we were on our way for the loss of a bit under an hour, which wasn't too bad considering.
Hence, it was late afternoon when we arrived into Potosí, the highest city of its size in the world - 160,000 or so people at over 4,000m altitude. The reason for this is the mines of Cerro Rico, the "rich hill" whose silver mines effectively funded the Spanish Empire for 2 centuries or more. In fact, it had a similar population at the end of the 16th century, making it one of the largest cities in the world at that time. However, these riches were extracted at the cost of the misery, and indeed the lives, of around 8 million indigenous Andeans and African slaves who worked the mines over those years. After independence, the mines remained open and under state ownership until the 1980s, although the silver had largely gone by the latter parts of the 19th century, and their continued operation was largely due to demand for tin, which the Spanish had never been that bothered with. These days, the mines are still operated by Miners' Co-operatives, but they struggle to make a living, and work in conditions that, but for the use of dynamite for blasting, have scarcely changed from the Middle Ages. Tours to the mines are actually Potosí's biggest tourist attraction, but, given my claustrophobia when underground, one which I declined to partake in.
At any rate, on arrival, I was again to suffer for my having foolishly used up all my change and small notes, as I was unable to secure transport to my lodgings. Luckily, Jerome and Estelle let me share their taxi to their hostel, which brought me about halfway to mine and did quite a bit of the climb from the bus station to the town centre, but still left me gasping my way for another 10 minutes or so across town fully laden with my packs and wondering where all the oxygen had gotten to. Still, I made it, and checked into the La Casona hostel, which was handily only a block and a half away from the central Plaza. I had a brief initial wander around town before the restaurants started opening for the evening, at which point I went to the La Casona Pub (no relation to the hostel) where I tried some beautiful microbrewed beer from Ted's Cerveceria in Sucre and had pique de lengua (spicy tongue, with a salsa and some chuños, a local variety of freeze-dried potatoes!). After this, I caught up on more of my internet needs (as your Inboses can probably attest) before heading back to the pub for their live music that evening.
This turned out to be a local folclore group of 8 musicians called Waira, playing the classic Andean instruments (including the tiny guitar that's a bit like a ukelele and the ubiquitous pipes and flute). For a cover charge of around 1 pound, they played a couple of sets of great music, and I had a very pleasant time, chatting with the bar staff (who all appeared to be from the same family, apart perhaps from one of the waiters who easily wins the prize of the campest Latin American I have yet met) and later with another English lad called Andy (from Hull) and a French lad called Marceau - they were heading on to Uyuni the next day, so I sang the praises of Estrella del Sur (whilst warning they could be tricky to get hold of!). And then it was time to go back to the hostel and sleep.
posted by Pat at 12:00 pm
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