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Buses in Bolivia
Bolivia, Why?
Humahuaca, Argentina
The bus from Humahuaca, Argentina to Bolivia is a painless two hour ride.
However, it's preceded by a succession of dour Argentine faces, Bolivia, why?
I had a cousin who went to Bolivia, she died.
In Bolivia, you ask.
No, here, of cancer.
In Bolivia the floods are horrible, there are no roads.
Everyone is either dead, or dying:(submerged in the mud, buried in ravines.) Your landlady tells you,
Yesterday the border was closed, everyone was sent back...maybe you shouldn't go.
Finally you stop saying the obvious, some Bolivians are still alive, probably.
The bus ride is painless. Bolivian Immigration is the slowest in the world, but also the friendliest.
Over tea the Official asks where you go next.
To Paraguay.
Paraguay, he says spilling tea, why?
Sitting in Vilazon
No one appears to be doing anything in Bolivia, it's remarkably relaxing.
They don't seem slothful (like some countries you could mention---Mexico), or depressed, or waiting for a sucker,
or segregated (men sip sip sipping tea while women build a nation). No, they seem genuinely relaxed; it's baffling.
You walk to the bus station at the end of town and ask the boy behind the counter for a ticket to Potosi.
He says sure, that will be almost no money . The bus leaves in six hours.
So, you pay almost no money, then you go to the park and relax with everyone else.
You try and remember the last time you did nothing, and didn't feel guilty, and you can't remember
Villazon to Potosi
Don't eat the candy
All the travel books say never accept cigarettes, food or sweets from natives--especially not on night trains.
You'll be drugged and will wake up without your money, passport or one of your kidneys.
The kid next to you is eating candy -- but he doesn't offer you any; so you arrived with all your organs intact.
Sucre
The White City
Sucre is called the white city because it's--well---white. The churches are white, the tourists are white also.
Backpackers stay here for months and take Spanish classes, which is really odd, because no one speaks Spanish here,
Indian languages sure, but Spanish, nope, not really.
Sucre to Santa Cruz
You have absolutely no memory of these twelve hours, it may be like childbirth.
Santa Cruz feels like Brazil, altitude tiredness is replaced with long siestas.
Santa Cruz to San Ignacio (Jesuit Church circuit)
Drugs May be the Answer
This trip takes either seven or twelve hours, let me explain:
After two hours the engine overheats, it smells like wet tar. The driver goes outside
and sleeps until the mules wake him up at dawn.
For those five hours a baby cries, Mama, COCA.
San Ignacio to San Raphael ( a church town)
The lips, the lips
It's still called the 10,30 bus even though it's well past noon. The people here are a mix of Andean
Indians (high cheekbones), and Brazilian (the lips, the lips.) You really don't mind sitting on the floor
and watching them speak.
San Ignacio to San Jose
The Red Ribbon
It takes all day, it stops everywhere. The road is a red ribbon of clay and is the most
beautiful thing you've ever seen.
San Jose to Santa Cruz
The big surprise
San Jose has the big, glamorous train station. Just to be sure you buy a delux ticket.
After two hours it crashes, really.
It jumps the rail and you go way up in the air, but not in a good way.
Why I'm not a Buddhist Anymore
I'm not a Buddhist anymore, I thought I should tell you that, so you don't hear it from the tv.
For the last years I meditated to 'calm the mind'. An especially hyped result is to, 'live in the moment'. That's the point of all the sitting on the ground, the breathing in and out, the counting.
I started looking for all these things because of the nutsiness in Western civilization.(You know who you are).
Define nutsy? Sure:
Sugar free, sodium free, oil free Raspberry Vinaigrettes--not just one, or two, or sixteen, but an entire aisle full of this essential product. This is more than nuts, it's mass insanity.
So I tried it breathing in and out, counting.
But, I'm not a Buddhist anymore. I figure lots of people 'live in the moment' without any calmness whatsoever--the average three year old for example.
But let's pick on a much bigger victim, like Indonesia. Their language doesn't have a future or a past tense; so, they live in an eternal present. That does not mean they're any good in a crisis, heck no, If you fall off a building by accident, just pray it's in Stolkholm and not in Jakarta, where instead of emergency calls and first aid, you'll get blank, frozen faces staring at you.
No past and no future leads to no options.
For the last weeks I've been in Bolivia No one and I mean no one relaxes into the moment well as Bolivians.
Yesterday we were all in a train wreck ( a million Bolivians, and a handful of Westerners), guess who panicked?
Bolivian ladies crawling back into the upside down train, ass first,--to retrieve dime store sandals, oh yes they did.
So, thankfully, finally, irony does serve a purpose. Once you realize you're not dead, it lifts you high up above the wreckage to have a good laugh.
Sometimes it lets you turn your problems into a story.
Adam Jeffries Schwartz is a writer and a traveler. He has stories, essays & poems in: Descant, Grimm,
Jacaranda & Bleach Magazines.
Online he pops up at many sites, including: Mosaic Minds, Melange, Ghoti (Fish), Litbits, Magazine Shiver,
QVoices, Caprice & Forbidden
Fruit.
Email: Adam Jeffries Schwartz
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