La Tren De La Muerte

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The Death Train - Finally! My adventure in South America began to sound like the swashbuckling, whip-cracking, cannibal-outrunning, Llama-sacrificing, poison-dart booby-trap-dodging experience that all those Indiana Jones movies had prepared me for. Quiet my 'still-beating, removed from my body with a dagger and held up for me to see' heart.

Unsurprisingly, I was in for some disappointment...

While the Lonely Planet left the origins of the Death Train's thrilling moniker as somewhat of an ambiguity, 3 hours into the numbing, smelly, repetitive squeak and clunk of our 5 kilometre per hour journey, it all became clear. We had been sentenced to death by BOREDOM. There should be a seperate paragraph in the Geneva Convention under the sub-heading 'Cruel and Unusual Punishment' regarding travel on the death train. It's genuinely less stimulating than a Judy Dench nude scene. Seriously.

Indeed, 5 hours and about 100 pre-pubescent snack-touts later (around 1am BBWT - Bolivians who've Bought a Wristwatch Time) in a suicidal delerium, I contemplated ending the dreadful monotony of it all with a sub-lethal injection of 'chicken' on a stick. The coward's way out, I know - but actually it was quite stimulating watching the tracks whizz by underneath the toilet bowl. No toilet paper provided - Bolivia's national motto, but the stiff breeze whizzing up from below delivered an effective blow-dry.

I was pretty sure the CSI team would place the chicken's time of death at least 1 week prior, cause as-yet undertermined. Judging by the hydration and latent temperature of the remains, the post-mortem events had preserved the tissues in a process described as wet mummification. It appears the perpetrator had initially indulged in a half-hearted attempt to dispose of the body by fire.

As it turned out, the kebab almost resulted in the violent death of its spectacularly irritating 10 year-old vendor.

'Shouldn't you be at home wetting the bed or lighting a fire somewhere?' I thought to myself, politely declining the Salmonella-pop as it metronomed inches from my face with each lurch of the carriage. By virtue of almost every food-name in Spanish terminating in a vowel sound - Pollo (chicken), Manzanilla (Cammomile Tea), Choclo (Mashed boiled corn); and the list disappears over the horizion, don't worry - all these wonderful treats-for-sale can (indeed must) be advertised with a horrifying, nasal, upward inflection perfect for rudely awakening sleeping gringos, or successfully auditioning for 'Home and Away'.

It so came to pass that with many a 'Pollo!' (pronounced Poy-Yo! as though you were involved in some form of industrial accident halfway through saying the word) the little cretin (Author's note: I'm allowed to slag him off because all his annoyances were deliberate: he had an evil smirk on his face and long after this blog terminates, he was outside smacking on the windows to rouse the last couple of people who slept through his unwelcome visit to the carriage) reached the end of the carriage, pulled off a tumbleturn worthy of Ian Thorpe and commenced a second lap of the desperately uninterested and previously sleeping passengers. It was at this point that two of us found it necessary to physically restrain our mutual friend. He was awoken suddenly by a particularly malicious 'Pollo!' delivered with such force and proximity (and saliva) into his ear, that we all agreed having the chicken skewer itself rammed in and out of his ear like a bottle-brush would have been preferable.

It took more than ten minutes of beautifully articulated counter arguments and WWF-style submission-holds before he reluctantly concurred that, to enthusiastically introduce 3 or 4 of the kebabs rectally into the child would be culturally insensitive. Especially given the numbers of malnourished children we'd encountered this trip, who would've appreciated the protein.

And so it went for 14 hours from the Brazilian border to Bolivia's richest city, Santa Cruz.

Mind-numbing, Butt-numbing, all to the tune (voice) of what I assumed was a B-grade Biolivian game show host: Heavy costume jewellery, teeth polished to a high gloss, sunglasses still on at 2am, tan so shiny his model in Madame Tussaud's would have been more lifelike, clearly appreciating what the accoustics of the 1st-class carriage was doing for the timbre of his voice. The subject of tonight's oration: 'Why Gringos disgust me with their opulent wealth, grotesquely rubbing it in the faces of the Noble, Humble, Underappreciated Bolivian People.' 'And...they don't even have the goddamn respect to learn the language.'

Wanna bet, dickhead?

'Haven't we heard this song before?' K muttered to me - eyemask, earplugs and sleeping bag in position, as though she could entice herself to sleep by pretending she was back in the womb.

All I could think was - 'See any other Bolivians in 1st-class, cheese-dick?' Earlier, for a moment, I was genuinely interested because I thought it was the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez (famous for hating George Bush, and being able to speak uninterrupted - not even for a toilet break - for more than 8 hours in a row). The two giveaways were that firstly, Hugo's not THAT MUCH of a man of the people (we were in a 1st-class carriage, but on a 3rd-cass train: 5-stars, one for every seat that still had upholstery) and second, all his posturing and chest-beating was a veiled attempt to get the Brazilian uni student sitting in the seat in front, OUT of her seat, and jeans. Then he tried to buy an empanada with a US $50 note - I hoped it was 'chicken'.

Sure enough, death featured heavily in my thoughts that trip - mine, the violent death of others, but mostly how I'd choose death before I'd choose to ever come back and do it again.

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