Busing it

Surreal. I look out the window at the milky way seeing the dusty desert landscape rush past in the bus's meager headlights. At 100 miles per hour at least. No real road. Bumpy as our nudist neighbor in Sydney. I'm breathing sand. I can see window glass but it doesn't seem to do anything. Every time another bus passes us the headlights show how thick the air is in our vehicle. I felt like getting my shovel and bucket out of my bag and start building sandcastles. Suddenly I realize I am doing the Paris-Dakar as a passenger on a regular Bolivian bus. These drivers must think the actual Paris-Dakar participants must be a bunch of fancy pussies since they pay extraordinary amounts to do what these dudes do all day & night, seven days a week. Anyway we enjoyed eleven torturous hours from a get-me-outta-here-quick middle of nowhere shit town called Uyuni to La Paz. These Bolivian bus drivers must have a sadistic strain for abusing poor foreign souls. Not even the heating gets turned on. Outside it must be close to zero degrees and well inside too...but thank you for the tiny little wool blanket! It helped keep me willy warm!

This was by far the worst bus ride ever. It’s even worse than public transport in Sydney. I swear I'll never take a bus again. So bad it makes me rethink my critics of Argentinian buses where really the worst thing was the shoe soles they gave us for dinner with the unidentifiable throw up on the side and the everlasting Dulce de Leche cookies for breakfast, dessert and everything in between.
I will never ever complain again about chairs reclining only 140 degrees when we paid for seats that should recline 160 degrees. Neither will I complain about the bus from Salta, Argentina to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile which was filled with the vomit smell of people suffering altitude sickness before we even started. I can still vividly recall the moaning, vomiting and burping couple across the isle from us when we started of at roughly 2000 m above see level and everything got worse as we reached 4700... Luckily we didn't suffer too much as we bought some good placebos from the farmacy. Turned out the dufus behind the counter gave us motion sickness rather than altitude sickness pills. To make things worse we soon found out that Sandra's bag had “disappeared” as soon as we reached San Pedro.

Even the bus ride coming up the road of death in Bolivia was more enjoyable. Actually that was fucking awesome in comparison. Especially after cycling down it you don't really notice how far down the cliff goes since you are paying attention to the road and not flying over the edge of it and turning yourself into a pile of moussaka at the bottom. Add to that the stories of accidents you get from the (australian) guide on the way up... thrilling and shocking how many accidents and non-accidents there were! One point was called “the martyrs of democracy”. Apparently at some point in history when the ruling party was confident of their popularity, organized open democratic elections and subsequently found out they weren't quite that popular at all, they took the 5 opposition leaders up to the camino de la muerte and chucked them over the edge...as you do. Anyway. We survived. Hurray!

Then today there was another bus ride which was a once in a lifetime experience. La Paz to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca.
It started of with some dude trying to make me sit on an auxiliary seat in a minibus. Some people are thoroughly clueless...
Even the two thousand locals already squeezed in there thought that was hilarious. Like fitting jumbo the elephant into a matchbox. It's alright, it's easy, just let the air out and it will fit! Really! Tadaaa! See!?
Alrighty, real bus it is then. The smell was real too. Phew!!! How do you say “hi-you-old-witch-have-you-had-a-shower-lately-and-why-are-you're-teeth-held-together-by-some-steel-wire?” in Spanish? Those Bolivian ladies might look quite cute with their big colourful skirts and bowler hats, but they smell like a donkey dragged through a pile of old yoghurt.
That wasn't all that happened on that bus ride though.
On board came a brazilian couple plus a camera man plus two crew ladies, one of which was also Brazilian. I could tell she was brazilian by the size of her bum which was wrapped expertly by some sporty pants in the Brazilian colours. Not that I was looking Sandra. Pinky swear!
My suspicion uttered to Sandra happened to be right when we got to chat to the couple; they were doing “the amazing race” for Brazilian television! Ready, steady, ACTION! And we were being filmed. Nice people though! She mentioned she lived in Manly for a year and misses Sydney a lot, that they’ve been on the road for three weeks and had about two to go if they weren't eliminated since they made some bad choices and moved from first into last place. All in all they were quite happy, slightly stressed and excited. Especially excited when we offered them some cookies as it seemed to be their lunch at nearly five in the evening...I don't think I was supposed to offer them anything but as the camera man and crew took some & handed the package right back to me (bastards!) I couldn't resist to offer those yummy quacker cookies directly to the couple. Happy faces all round! Yey! Hope they’ll be in touch!