Jungle-bound, Still (La Paz, Bolivia)

First of all, I love that this country's capital translates to Peace. Even if every fourth building entrance is guarded by several men with machine guns and public squares and plazas all serve as homebase to at least a few riot police with bullet proof vests and full body shields. The clear skies, the mountains, and the color override it all. Ah, South America.

So after Santa Cruz I shared a taxi with an English couple to Semaipata which is an adorable and impressively quiet small town in the hills that serves as a popular long weekend destination for wealthy Bolivians. From there I went with 4 Israelis and a German guide on a long dayhike into neighboring Amboro, a national park and cloud forest. I rode on the roof on the Jeep on the way to the trailhead, clinging to the roof rack up and down steep, rutted roads, which was a highlight. Israeli travellers don't have the best reputation and though it sounds like a horrible generalization, I can't say it's entirely unjustified. Our day together was pleasant due to beautiful views, giant tree ferns, and impressive low-flying condors. At the top of the mountain we climbed, we were actually IN clouds, and seemingly gale-force winds, so there was no view, but ascending and decending were both really beautiful and the top was fun regardless. The next day I went horseback riding. Sort of. I arranged it at the local community center run by a couple who reminded me of Denise and one of her hippy boyfriend's from the Cosby Show. There were signs up about riding so I thought it was common, but it turned out that the boyfriend with the waist-length rat tail and mouth full of coca leaves just rented me his own horse, his small, pony-like white horse, and off we went. Rat Tail walked in front. Walked. I just assumed when I paid for a horse and a guide that the guide would be on a horse. Silly me. Instead I felt like a 6 year-old at a birthday party with backyard pony rides. The horse walked at a crawling pace and ignored all encouragement on my part regarding speed and direction. I can't imagine what passing locals thought. Totally ridiculous. It took over 2 hours of beautiful scenery to get the agreed destination, pre-Incan ruins called El Fuerte, where I was rather ecstatic to hop off. I parted ways with Rat Tail and the horse and checked out the ruins on foot. Then I walked back to town, narrowly avoiding the lunge of just one rabid dog, and ate a delicious veggie burger. In the morning I went back to Santa Cruz.

Here's where I start trying to get to the jungle. I was dying to take a cargo boat up the river through the Amazon to Trinidad, but I couldn't for the life of me find a partner in crime and the thought of a full week in a hammock in the middle of the jungle, on a cargo boat, alone, in the end didn't seem like the smartest option as self-preservation goes so with great disappointment, I abandonded that mission. I buy a night bus ticket to Trinidad and kill the day running errands and watching World Cup games in Santa Cruz. I get on my night bus to Trinidad. I sleep. We arrive around 6 am and it's a bit rainy. Trinidad isn't known for being much other than a bit of a city where there aren't many of those so I investigate my options for getting to Rurrenebaque which is jungle tour central and find out a bus is leaving at 10 am. I decide to go for it rather than waste a day doing nothing in Trinidad. The road is known for being impassable in the rainy season but that ended in April. It's dry season now and I ask if the road is clear and everyone says no problem. I wait for the bus. It's too far to walk to town and I can't leave my pack anywhere so I just hang out eating empanadas de queso and chatting with random elderly Bolivian women who want to know what the hell the random gringa is doing in Trinidad. I told you, there's nothing there - nobody goes. I am calm and prepared for a long journey. At 11 am one guy starts loading trillions and trillions of pounds of cargo onto the bus. Don't ask me what, just cargo. The bottom level of the bus is all just stuff and the people are all up on the second level. We board around noon and finally leave around 12:30 pm. By 1 pm we're stopped at a police roadblock which requires every single person to get off the bus for near stripsearching while dogs plow through the luggage sniffing for cocaine on its way to the Brazillian border. The whole crowd gets a kick out of watching the white girl pull out her passport and explain what the f she's doing on a bus in this part of Bolivia with a year's supply of small pink pills. Just one more joy of anti-malarials. By 1:30 pm we're moving again and by 2 pm we´re stuck in the mud.

The road is like nothing I've seen. Or nothing I've seen cars even contemplate trying to navigate. There are puddles up to my knees and mud above my ankles. I know because we get off the bus the first time it gets stuck and walk around a little while the driver and a few of the male passengers dig the bus out, but 50 feet later it is stuck again. This time for good. A number of attempts are made, barefoot, sloshing around, pushing, reversing, and so forth to extract the trillion pound bus, but it isn't happening. Normally long distance travel is the one time I complain about being a girl and wish I could relieve my bladder easily like men get to at the sides of roads, but this is one day where I don't have one ounce of interest in being male and thus expected to assist a hopeless mission. As a girl, and the white girl at that, I wouldn't be allowed to help if I tried. Needless to say, I don't try. The women on the bus get increasingly frustrated as the day progresses. I read and chat with my Bolivian ladies. Around 3 pm someone calls the police from a cell phone to send a truck for us, but the police say that the road is closed and they can't. Around the same time an old lady starts crying. A man tells her to have faith in God. 4 pm - the pregnant lady next to me and I have eaten all our mandarins and crackers. 5 pm - it's raining and the driver and owner are refusing to refund fares. Women are pissed and the billion kids on board are getting fussy. 5:15 pm - a bunch of the women get off to go pee. I don't really have to go, but I´m sure as hell not going alone later on so I go anyway. There is an anaconda-filled river a few meters out of sight to the left. There is 2 foot marshy grass and no cover. We walk a few feet down the road and we squat. Everyone everywhere in sight of everyone everywhere. It's hilarious. 5:30 pm - God man hands out pamphlets about Jesus and the coming of the Messiah. I should have seen it coming. I hand mine to the pregnant lady saying I can't understand it and Godman hears me - oops - and asks why. I blame it on the language barrier though that has nothing to due with my lack of interest in being converted to extremist Christianity trapped on a bus in the mud in the middle of Bolivia. 6 pm - it's getting dark. I can't see my book anymore. The pregnant lady tells me she's uncomfortable and impatient because she's pregnant. I say I must be pregnant too then. Around 8 pm, just as I'm dozing off there's commotion and talk of a micro. I jump up. Someone has called someone who has called someone and there's a minibus down the road taking whoever wants to go. Bus fares are not being refunded. F the 15 bucks - get me out of here! I wake up the bus assistant and have to be a raging bitch in order to get him to get my pack out from the luggage compartment which he does hatefully. Pregnant lady and I have agreed we're both flying to Rurre. The bus people are trying to say the road is going to be fine in the morning and they will continue. There's rain coming down as they say it. It's a cruel joke. I feel terrible for everyone stuck there, but I'm out. I shuffle down the road sliding through the mud toward the lights of the minibus with my pack, my daypack, and pregnant lady's wheely suitcase. She´s pregnant - what choice do I have? Everyone else going is way ahead of us. Suddenly the lights disappear and we´re convinced they´ve left us. We´re crushed, but we´re not going back to the bus. Pregnant lady says we´ll go to the pueblo nearby. I have seen no such pueblo, but she insists there's a shack down the road. Ok, sure. We keep walking/sinking/sliding and eventually stumble across the minibus which hasn´t deserted us, it just turned off the lights. Phew. We ride back to the outskirts of Trinidad. By 9 pm we´re hopping on separate motorcycle taxis and meeting at the bus station, but when I get there my pregnant friend is nowhere to be found. A ticket seller suggestively offers a free ticket to Santa Cruz. I decline and wander aimlessly for a bit and then take another mototaxi to a crap hotel with sheets that look like someone has been slaughtered on them. I sleep for a couple of hours and get up early.

At 7 am I go to the airport. It is raining. I am thanking Jesus I am not sitting in the mud on that godforsaken bus with seats that barely recline. Planes are not landing in Rurre because it is raining so I decide to go to La Paz. I have 5 hours to kill. I kill them. The plane is a metal death tube with one seat on each side of the aisle and maybe 5 rows. There is no flight attendant to show me how to secure my seatbelt. There are 2 pilots, there are manuals, there is pointing, gesturing, checklist-following...this is training! I´m sorry but if I get my hair cut by a stlyist-in-training I know about it, I choose it, and I get a big fucking discount. Did I fail to notice an embarassing yellow 'Student Pilot' sign on top of this plane? I don´t think so. I bought a full fare ticket to La Paz - I didn´t sign up for amateur hour flying. I mean, Christ. We taxi for so long in such a small airport I start to think maybe we are actually driving the plane to La Paz and I start to feel better. But eventually we take off. And we land. Safely.

La Paz is bigger and busier than I expected. Steep, wedged into a valley between impressive mountains. There are lots of travellers which is odd just because I´ve been in pretty quiet places lately, though travellers means traveller restaurants which means I get to eat things like salads which is a pretty big rush after 3 days of empanadas. I have a cold which paired with decreased oxygen at altitude is making breathing an eventful project. Today I went to a museum depicting the history of the Coca leaf and to a mirador, a lookout point at the world's most enormous and certainely highest playground which was sunny and fun. Tomorrow I'm trying a bus to Rurre. Again. This road they tell me shouldn't be affected by rain. Granted, it's nicknamed 'The World's Most Dangerous Road' but that apparently has to due with the cliffs and not the mud. Wish me luck. Hopefully next time you hear from me I really will have been to the jungle. Love, d.