Killing time

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After a horrendous nights sleep, I got up at around 7.30am. It felt like I had turned over to see what the time was almost every other hour last night, and it wasn't because my dorm was next to the main road. I dragged my body out of bed to the other end of the hostel to wake myself up with a shower. After I had fiddled about with the shower, trying to get the temperature between scalding and freezing, I was awake and ready for breakfast. I set about frying the blood sausage and scrambling the eggs that I had bought at the market last night, just as Justine came into the kitchen. We exchanged good mornings, and she asked if i would like breakfast. It was almost an awkward question, as though I had done something wrong by cooking as I was now used to. Trying to ignore the awkwardness, I said yes and was offered the now expected bread rolls and jam.Having eaten, I packed my things and left my bags piled on my bed ready for the off. I had an hour or so before I had to catch the bus to the airport, and I needed to find an internet cafe that also had a scanner. I needed to forward all the information I had gathered to Tina so I could get my tax return in as soon as possible. Although the first place that Justine had recommended didn't have a scanner, a funny little shop around the corner from the hostel did. In my massively broken Spanish, I asked if it were possible to scan and email. The exceptionally helpful man nodded and set about scanning the forms so I could finally get my travel money for the USA together. Relieved to have that monkey off my back, I returned to the hostel to grab my bags and make my way to the bus stop.It was ridiculously dry and hit as I made the rather sweaty three block walk to the 8A bus stop. It seemed wonderfully simple that in most of the places I'd visited the buses only went from one to eight. Having got there in plenty of time, I dumped my bags on the pavement and started to mop my brow. Just as my T-shirt had begun to dry, the bus arrived, so I quickly gathered my things and hopped aboard. Although I had got on a much earlier bus than I needed to, I still felt like I had left it a little late, as the bus driver began to make detour after detour through different suburbs on the way to the airport. Thankfully, we arrived outside the airport with a little over an hour and a quarter before my plane to Santa Cruz took off. When I say outside, I do actually mean outside, because the bus didn't actually go to the terminal building. Having stopped on the road outside I loaded myself up like a packhorse yet again, and began the mile long walk in the scorching heat. Having made it to the terminal building in a much sweatier mess than I was at the bus stop in town, I checked in my heavy backpack with Aerosur. Once I had made sure that I had my boarding card to get from Santa Cruz to La Paz, I made my way upstairs to the departure gate to relax before the flight. It seemed that everyone on my flight, including the small children, had at least one piece of hand luggage with them. I still hadn't got my head around the fact that it was almost Christmas, mainly due to the fact that it was blazing hot compared to the snow and ice I was used to at this time of year. We didn't have to wait long before the flight began boarding, and so it was goodbye to country number eleven on my world tour.The plane was reasonably full, and even though I had checked in relatively late, I had still managed to score a window seat. Once we had taken off, we flew over the mountains into Bolivia and the view was amazing. I could just make out the small villages and towns below, that had grown around the valleys and natural water sources, that had been reduced to a trickle in the heat. Although I hadn't prepared any food for this journey I wasn't going to go hungry because Aerosur were treating us to an in flight snack of, you guessed it, a cheese and ham roll. I still didn't understand, after almost three weeks, how the whole of South America managed to operate on the the humble ham and cheese sandwich alone.As we came into land, I reset my watch and began to mentally prepare for my six hour lay over in Santa Cruz. I couldn't exactly leave the airport, because I didn't know how far the city was or if I'd be able to make it back in time for my flight even if I did. Feeling it was safer to sit and wait, I made my priority getting something substantial to eat, so headed to trusty subway...the only option in the airport. When I say the only option, there were others but they mainly involved cake or chocolate, which wouldn't have kept me going very long. Struggling yet again with the language barrier, I ordered a six inch BMT, which is where my troubles really began. Not only did they scare my sandwich with meat, but it hardly got shown any of the rather sorry looking salad. As hard as I tried to indicate that I'd like more salad, the guy behind the counter just wasn't playing ball, so I left with the most expensive, most pitiful looking sandwich I'd ever seen.Once I'd eaten, I sat and people watched in-between blogging as almost everyone else that had been on my flight filtered through customs to get the connection. I got very bored very quickly, and soon resorted to playing sudoku to pass the time. It was one of those situations where no matter how long it's been between activities, the time simply drags on and on and on.After a couple of hours I gave up, and decided to go through customs for something to do more than anything. After being quizzed as to why I'd been in the airport for so long, I was allowed through to the departures lounge to continue my wait. I was just as bored here as I was the other side, except for the fact that there was a cafe offering halfway decent food. I grabbed a couple of empanadas and a wedge of dulcedeleche cake to keep myself going before I eventually boarded the plane.Once we were in La Paz I collected my bags and headed straight to the taxi rank as it was too late to try and figure out the local bus system. It was a longer drive than I expected from the airport into the city even though my driver was going at seemingly breakneck speeds down the hill. Once we had arrived at Wild Rovers Backpackers, I couldn't get out of the taxi quick enough. I was so thankful that I was finally at my destination, having wasted a whole day in transit. I was checked in by Diego, who showed me around the hostel and eventually to my room. Wild Rovers was huge, by far and away the biggest hostel I'd stayed in so far on my world tour, and it felt a little intimidating.I dumped my bags on my bottom bunk and headed straight to the bar for a much needed beer. I just needed to unwind and relax from the stress of being in transit, and an ice cold Paceña was exactly what I needed. It was short lived however, because all of a sudden altitude sickness began to kick in. I had read up about it before I arrived, and knew that flying in would be dangerous. I was very short of breath and found it hard to to settle my heart rate. I persevered through the rest of my beer before turning in for the night, hopeful that a sound nights sleep would ease the symptoms and I'd be back on form tomorrow.

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