Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Michael and I were never even supposed to spend any time in Cochabamba at all. Then we decided to stay just the one night, because we were tired from our overnight bus trip. And then for a while I was afraid we would never leave. And Cochabamba is not exactly the world's most fascinating city. We just couldn't escape. This is how the days went:

June 21 - The night before we'd made plans to leave in the morning, but woke up thinking, "Ah, forget it." The room is nice, what's the hurry? We'll have laundry done, I'll do some writing and Michael will take his shredding jeans to the sastre.

June 22 - No more errands, just more, "Ah, forget it, let's stay another day." I told Michael we didn't have to volunteer at Inti Wara Yassi after all. Time is running out and it's time to make sacrifices. Michael's already had to give up on snowboarding in Chile.

June 23 - More "Ah, forget it." We had dinner at one of the cheap, smoky churrascerias on the corner, spending about $3 USD for two steaks, rice, papas, salad and beer.

June 24 - This was supposed to be the big day (again). We'd promised ourselves we would truly leave this time. But I woke up at 4:00 a.m., sick. By the time the alarm went off at 8:00 a.m. I'd already been to the bathroom four or five times, so I figured it would be unwise to stray too far. Later in the day I strayed down to the Internet cafe at street level and Michael and I bought plane tickets home. We will fly from Buenos Aires to Charlotte, NC on August 10th.

June 25 - I was still sick, but determined to leave Cochabamba. We packed up and walked all the way out to where the LP says we can catch a micro to Villa Tunari. It was a long, hot walk, but I was feeling too stubborn to take a taxi. We had not yet eaten, even though Michael kept warning me that I should eat. When we got to our destination, there was nary a micro in sight, but it didn't matter because I felt far too wretched to board one. So we went into the nearest restaurant where Michael ate an almuerzo and I ate some soup and had my hair stared at. Then we took a taxi back to the hostel and checked back into the same room. Clean sheets, woo.

June 26 - I was feeling slightly better, but we decided to give it one more day, and to take the bus, which would probably give us more space than a micro. Michael went down to the bus station to find out times.

June 27 - Today was the day for real. It did not go well. We got to the bus station before 9:00 a.m. and found that there were no busses to Villa Tunari. The guy behind the counter had no idea what Michael was talking about. We asked around the other bus companies and no one else could sell us tickets to Villa Tunari either. The best offer we got was to buy a ticket all the way to Santa Cruz, paying full price,of course, and simply get off early - less than half the way there. Clearly that's crap, because people are always getting on and off busses at the side of the road and not paying full price, nor should they.

So we got into a cab with the intention of taking a micro. When the driver discovered we wanted to get to Villa Tunari, he didn't take us to the spot where the LP says micros can be found, but someplace else entirely, which happened to be teeming with busses and micros. We found one right away (the driver started yelling "Villa Tunari" as soon as he saw us). The back seat was empty and both Michael and I made the same silly mistake, thinking we'd get the whole thing to ourselves. No, no, no. When will we learn? There were three of is in the middle row and three in the back and we went trolling around for someone to fill the front seat.

At a busy roadside area outside of town, we parked and the driver went off to search for a fare. We waited an hour, pacing up and down and taking in the hubbub, until he came back with an old man carrying a burlap sack. The sack went into the back and the man went into the front and we finally got going. Right into a mess of road construction that at times blocked off the road so that we had to stop and wait. The popsicle man was doing a brisk business and the hairlookers were out in force, but I was just not in the mood. I felt claustrophobic in the back of the micro and wished I was sitting in the middle instead. The nice thing about the randomness in Bolivia is that if it looks as though you'll be sitting for a while, you're free to get out of the vehicle.

We stopped three times before we were able to move beyond the construction and then stopped again for a police checkpoint. As the officer opened the micro's back hatch, my daypack tumbled to the ground - my daypack containing our little PowerBook G4 in its Booq case. The driver retrieved it and I took it onto my lap, too late. Michael and I gave each other a look, but there was nothing we could do but wait and see if the laptop was damaged. We've never dropped it before. Michael just wrote to Booq a little while ago, singing the praises of the case; now we'll know if he spoke too soon. Meanwhile the policeman was using a mysterious metal stick to rake around the floor at our feet. He didn't find anything untoward, and we were back on our way.

As we drove, the air became more sultry and the vegetation more tropical, with enormous green leaves lining the rattling cobblestone road. And eventually we drove into Villa Tunari, another long, low, narrow, road-hugging town. The micro was continuing to points east, so we got off at a random place and wandered around until we found a hotel. The room is nice enough, but the decoration consists of a Tigo advertising poster of a woman screaming. It's very jarring and if it were not fastened to the wall so firmly I'd remove it and hang it back up when we leave.

So we're out of Cochabamba, finally. The computer has a nice, characterful new ding, but seems to be working fine so far. We'll go to Inti Wara Yassi tomorrow, but just to visit, not to volunteer, and then move on to Santa Cruz. Time is now officially running out. It's so strange to finally have a going-home date. In the beginning of this trip when people would ask the old "how long you out for?" Michael and I would smile at each other and say, "We don't know - as long as the money lasts." Then it became, "Probably sometime in August, but nothing's set." And now it's "August 10th."

But we're kind of ready to go home. We are enjoying ourselves, but we still haven't fully recovered from the emotional rut we fell into in Cuzco and we're kind of ready for things to start being familiar again. I was glad to buy the tickets. In fact, there was a minute there in Cochabamba when I wanted to just go home right then and there. But I can't help but be sad that the trip is ending.

And I feel sad that we're not going to make it to Antartica. But as some of you may have already known, it's entirely the wrong time of year to be going down there, and in fact it wouldn't even be possible to make the trip, as it's much too dangerous with the ice and the darkness and everything else that's a factor in the winter. So the trip is now a bus trip from NYC to Buenos Aires, which is no small potatoes, but still short of our original goal. So I want to go home, but I'm sad to have bought tickets. It's an odd emotional mix. I can't even make sense of it myself.

HOURS IN A MINIBUS/COMBI/COLLECTIVO/MICRO: 11.5

 

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Our micro leaves Villa Tunari without us.

Can we express ourselves less disturbingly?