Wednesday, August 11, 2010

City Bound...



Thursday July 8, 2010

Well. If my first experience on Calle de la Muerte in the Sportage in broad daylight was slightly terrifying, you might imagine what the trip back was like in a full-size passenger bus under the cloak of night. Jaime and I paid 5 Bs extra (~ 75 cents) to have seats in the front row of the bus (exactly why these seats cost extra is not readily apparent, but more on that later), and therefore we had the best seats in the house to watch all of the hair-raising close calls that give the road its infamous reputation. My favorite regular occurrence was to round a sharp curve at full speed only to be blinded by large headlights beaming through the windshield from an uncomfortably close distance. Each time, vehicles were quickly steered out of their collision course and brakes were slammed down hard. A lucky extra of being in the front seat while your bus struggles to come to a halt is that you get to watch as the beams of your vehicle's headlights suddenly cease to illuminate anything in front of you. This is not because the lights have failed, but rather because there is nothing in front of you left to illuminate save a billowing cloud of dust and the valley floor six hundred feet below. The driver would then demonstrate his stellar reverse driving skills as he retraced our winding tracks back several hundred feet to reach a place in the road that was wide enough for both vehicles to pass. Surely they can do better than this, you might say. My best answer is that they try: Virtually all of the large vehicles that travel regularly on this road have installed horns that would put any fog horn to shame. The purpose of these ruffian 100 decibel gems is not merely to ensure that, in the event of an emergency, everyone on the bus is fully conscious to see their own wildly exciting expiration, but also to make our presence known to any approaching vehicles that might be just around the bend. Ironically, however, the horns are literally so loud that the driver cannot possibly hope to hear anything outside of his own thoughts while honking; he certainly cannot hear the equally loud fog horn of the vehicle that is approaching the other side of the hairpin turn. Swing and a miss.

Before our departure Jaime made sure to emphasize that we had paid more for the front seats. I wasn't quite sure why they were more expensive, but I supposed it was for what would be a comparatively smoother ride. While I am certain that the level of bouncing that we experienced was far less than that of the passengers further back, our forward location was not without its faults. The bus driver started the engine and I nestled into my seat as the cabin settled for departure. As the bus was pulling away from the curb, one last-minute passenger jumped in and ran up the stairs. Having already noticed that the bus was quite full, I wondered where she was planning to sit and why she was so late in arriving. I watched her gaze toward the back of the bus and slowly lower to the floor the large, colorful load she carried on her back. She paused, she turned, and without a word she then sat on my armrest. Right.

We rode that way for a couple hours before she yelled to the bus driver to stop and let her off. Aaahhh, I settled back into my seat, my neck aching from the awkward angle it had held while trying to preserve some semblance of personal space; at least that's over, I thought to myself. We hadn't been driving for more than thirty minutes when the bus again came to a stop and the door to the cabin opened. A young man poked his head in and yelled to the driver, Do you have any seats? “Uno,” the driver yelled back. Somos dos! (There are two of us!). “Tengo uno, no mรกs” (I only have one seat). I watched the man hesitate for an instant before yelling Okay! I'll be right back! He momentarily disappeared into the night before reappearing with parade of young girls, his wife, and a toddler. Apparently by “two” he meant six. The two younger girls clustered around my feet while the older one stood facing me, clutching sticky hands to the armrest I had so recently won back.  Apparently the extra 5 Bolivianos was for the coziness factor...

As we pushed on, the air became colder, thinner, and more polluted, and a familiar groggy, headachey dizziness returned to my brain. Aaaahhh La Paz. Welcome back.

Save a few noteworthy adventures, La Paz is best told in pictures. Here goes...




Colorful doors and angry dogs everywhere...









  Hazy red mountains....
And exquisite sunsets.




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