Thursday, June 29, 2006

The town of Villa Tunari is located along the road between Cochabamba, where we came from, and Santa Cruz, where we're going. There does not, however, seem to be any way of booking a bus from Villa Tunari to Santa Cruz, though we did find a small bus station specializing in transport to Cochabamba. We pored over the materials we'd gotten from Inti Wara Yassi and asked several people, and the consensus was that we needed to stand at the side of the road and flag down a Santa Cruz-bound bus. Simple enough, right? Ha ha ha again, gringos!

Based on the times that busses leave Cochabamba, they are expected to roll through Villa Tunari some time between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. and between 8:00 p.m. and midnight. With that in mind, we were up and out of our tigo sponsored room before 11:00 a.m.

I'll skip over the fightscussion over where to eat or not eat, and who might or might not have been being passive-agressive or sulky and whether or not the other person should have just been more decisive, and get the the part where we have decided not to eat at all then, is that better? fine with me! and are waiting in the weeds along the side of Villa Tunari's main street, which is also the road leading to Santa Cruz.

There was no bus. We talked to a couple of taxi drivers, wondering if there might be a better spot to wait, but had no useful result as we couldn't understand them. Sometimes the Spanish works out so well and sometimes we hit a pocket of folks that speak it differently enough to throw us off completely. We tried crossing the street with the intent of getting a taxi to the TACNA checkpoint where the busses all must stop on the way into town. But the next taxi driver didn't want to take us there, telling us the best spot to wait was right across the street, where we'd been.

The good news is that the weather was absolutely perfect for standing at the side of the road and waiting for a bus. Warm, but not too warm, overcast but not windy, and no fear of rain. Also we had a great view of the busses loading up and leaving for Cochabamba every five minutes. The bad news is we got to take advantage of that nice waiting weather for a long, long time.

Oh the small dramas of bus-waiting. Thinking you see something big coming, could be a bus, might be a bus... no, it's a truck. Or when it really is a bus, but the ayudante gives you the "no" finger wave and you're not sure why, but you have to put down the bags you've gathered up and cringe when you see how perilously close to dog poo Michael puts his bags and sigh and wait some more. We wondered if the delay had anything to do with the road construction we'd crawled through on our way into town.

At 1:30 we gave up and went to go have a leisurely almuerzo. Assuming we'd missed the morning's busses somehow, we decided to head over to the Internet place to kill some time. There really isn't anything to do in Villa Tunari. Michael loses interest in online doings a lot faster than I do, so he paid up and went for a walk while I stayed. A short while later, he came running back in. "I saw busses!"

I quickly signed out of everything and gathered my things so we could run out and see what was going on. I had my money out. Three hours and forty minutes, rounded up to four hours by the rules of that particular place, at three bolivianos per hour equals twelve bolivianos. (About $1.50 USD.)

Unfortunately, the woman on duty was having a terrible time doing the arithmetic. I felt for her because simple math can be a mystery to me too, but the thing is, when that's what you have to do all day you need to come up with a system, even if it's counting on your fingers and toes or making a row of lines and crossing some of them out. By the time she had it all worked out there was no chance of catching the bus Michael had seen, but we waited at the roadside anyway, hoping there would be another.

An old man who happened along tried to help us, saying there wouldn't be another bus until at least 8:00, and that we should go to the little place across the street and have a "refresquito." Instead we went back to our hotel and played rummy in the lobby. After that we went to have dinner at a grubby little outdoor place where a young girl was sent running down the street to the store when we asked for mayonesa and then midway through our meal, borrowed the newly-purchased bottle for her own dinner. The tables were cleared by a guy wearing a t-shirt saying “Josh survived his Bar Mitzvah August 17 2002.” The food, fried chicken, fried yucca, rice and salad, was quite good. I love fried yucca.

All the while we had our eyes peeled for busses. We paid for our food before we finished eating, in case we had to leap up and run. This happened. Alas, the bus was not for us. And so began another round of waiting by the side of the road, this time in the dark, but still with the pleasant temperature. We met a tiny old lady who was also going to Santa Cruz and who attached herself to us. Later we realized that she needed someone who could get up from where we were sitting and trot to the side of the road fast enough to stop a bus.

At around 11:00, the busses started coming through for real. But they were all full. Finally one had space - one space. Michael and I urged the old woman on board. At least once she was on a bus we wouldn't have to feel responsible for her anymore. At 11:45 there was another bus, and this time the ayudante swinging out the door assured us he had two seats.

"Asientos," Michael tried to clarify. Like, actual seats? "Si, si, si," Fifty bolivianos each. The bus was moving as we climbed up the stairs and into the darkened cabin, too late to get out when I was blocked by a blanket-wrapped body lying in the aisle. I've come a long way since Guatemala and am now capable of pushing myself onto a seemingly crowded bus if need be, but this was different. I didn't know what exactly I'd be stepping on if I attempted to get past the body, so I hesitated. Michael thought he could do better and edged around me, but soon saw the difficulty. The ayudante woke up the sleeping person and made it - it turned out to be a her - sit up and move out of the way.

He then made some guy take his small child onto his lap and he gave me the newly empty seat, and took Michael all the way to the back of the bus, presumably to move someone else. The bus was crowded and the red-black air was thick and warm with body heat and sighs of sleep. Multiple people shared each pair of seats. I counted myself fortunate to have an entire seat to myself, with only a grownup and one child in the seat next door.

A couple of people were sitting on camp chairs in the aisle - no sleep for them, unless they were truly skilled. I worried about Michael and how he was faring, and about the person or persons that had been displaced for him, but my seat was comfortable and I'd waited for this bus for over twelve hours. I soon drifted off to sleep against the hum of tires on the road.

YEARLONG RUMMY TOURNAMENT SCORE (Megan): 4570

YEARLONG RUMMY TOURNAMENT SCORE (Michael): 4465

 

Post a comment:

Name:
Email:
URL:
A pig says:
Comment: (HTML is allowed)

Scary walkwayless bridge leading to Inti Wara Yassi.

One of Villa Tunari's stray dogs. I named this one Colleen. How do they know I'm going to feed them?

Here's another pic of me with a monkey. For some reason this one decided to climb into my t-shirt and hang out. I think he was cold.