Sucre - not so sweet

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This weekend was intended to be one of the highlight trips of our time in Bolivia - a four day jeep tour in the Salar de Uyuni (the immense salt plains on the Altiplano - check it out: www.salardeuyuni.com). However, all the political trouble going on in Bolivia has meant that all the main roads to the cities are blocked by protestors, and so there were no buses going. For a brief background to what its all about, read this BBC news article

Now, although some may say we are cheap, we aren’t that bad, and we did look into flights instead to get us to the starting point of Tupiza about 800 miles from Cochabamba. But after sitting in a travel agent for most of the day there was no luck as being the only means of getting around they are all full - but we did hear that a bus was going to Potosi that night instead. Potosi is around 12 hours by bus, and then Tupiza, the starting point, another seven beyond that - not too bad, lets give it a go!

So we hot-footed it to the bus station to find that this was in fact the only bus leaving Cbba that day - it was clearly intending to run the blockades. Well I´m up for that, so we got on and settled in. We were the only gringos onboard - all others had obviously been scared off by the news - but we wanted to get to get to the Salari.

Looking a couple of seats ahead - I see a cylinder, a large oxygen cylinder with a seat to itself (on a not surprisingly very busy bus) and a drip bottle hanging fro the overhead luggage rack. Connected to this cylinder is an obviously unwell old man, who we learn is on his last legs and being accompanied by four or five of his family back to his home town of Potosi. The driver learns of this and starts to protest about the cylinder being a hazard (er…he’s right) but in the end we get going, the family tweaking the oxygen and drip every few minutes and checking the old guy (‘papi') is ok.

Two hours out of Cbba and close to midnight we reached a roadblock that wasn’t going to let us through and we couldn’t get around. After the driver and several more ‘active’ passengers discussed the issue with the protestors, the issue of having a sick bloke who cannot stand around forever is brought up, but clearly not to much use. We were left with three choices: stay there and wait for the blockade to lift (‘there’ being in fact ‘nowhere’ and the wait potentially days - not a popular option); pay the protestors to lift the blockade (umm, real political integrity there then); or pay the driver even more to reverse up the road and go a different way. Now bearing in mind that we were still an estimated 10 hours from Potosi with no idea where the roadblocks were, I was quite surprised when the majority went with the driver. Given that we understood six tenths of the conversation, we went with the flow…

Oh my god! This bus went through the night over fields, and through streams, up mountain passes, along unbuilt roads while the workers looked on in amazement, past farms with people and animals who had clearly never seen a bus before - anywhere to avoid the main roads where the blockades were. In fact this meant an extremely rewarding journey through the mountains. I caught the driver with a huge was of coca in his mouth - not sure if this was reassuring but these guys really do have a talent for this and we never felt unsafe. He even seemed to go slowly and carefully enough so that ‘papi’ and his medical equipment were not thrown around too much.

The Andes are fascinating, you can drive though them day or night and never get bored of the scenery, there is always something new to watch. The days are obviously good, the mountains are so immense in every dimension, but at night you can still see because of the moonlight and or stars, there is no light pollution - if fact there are no lights, most of the small hamlets only have one or two street lamps. I could see 10 dots of light in the distance at one point, and watched them get closer as we approached this village - there was no other light around for miles. The contrast created by the bus headlights against the adobe houses and trees means you can see every detail.

The terrain changes incredibly quickly, you can be driving along a seemingly endless flat stretch and then turn a corner and be at the top of a precipitous 1000 foot drop, and it feels like you are in an aeroplane looking down on it all. It really isn’t that easy to get bored even on an all night journey - which is great for light sleepers like me. Great to watch with some Radiohead playing on the Ipod.

Dawn came and we were still going strong. By mid morning we had reached Sucre and knew that Potosi was only 3 more hours away. Hope rising now we started to relax…ha! More than halfway between Sucre and Potosi, only 50km (30 miles in old money) from Potosi, we came across a roadblock, the first since the night before. The locals were incensed, and piled off the bus to talk to the protestors, we stayed back - the only gringos and the crowd definitely ugly.

There was no convincing them, even by playing the ‘papi’ card, and. I should mention that Potosi is at 4000m, a place where you definitely need lots of oxygen, and yet because of the delays ‘papi’s O2 had run out hours ago, and he was clearly not in a condition to sit around in a bus for any length of time - as we got off he looked terrible and his family distraught. The fact that this had no effect on the mood of the protestors and they would not even allow just him through so he could get back home to die in peace stayed with us a long time and minimised any sympathy for their cause, just or not.

This time we were faced with more limited options: walk though the (hostile) blockade and walk to Potosi (in the midday Andean sun - really attractive); stay and wait for the blockade to lift (see before); and go back to Sucre. We did some thinking for ourselves, and decided to go back to Sucre under our own steam. The bus was going to wait with ‘papi’ still on board, and several other passengers had already started to walk to Potosi. So, using our linguistics skills and lots of cash, we persuaded a taxi driver to take us back to Sucre, where we would regroup and consider our next move.

Or so we thought… halfway back to Sucre, we came across, guess what, a roadblock with a handful of campesinos (country folk - the ones doing the protesting), which had gone up since we had come past here in the bus earlier! (the political situation in Bolivia had been worsening all the time and more blockades going up throughout the country). So we were now stuck between two blockades and couldn’t go anywhere!

Well this is where Simon the mild mannered janitor (ref Hong Kong Phooey) finally lost it, and walked straight through the blockade to see if there was another taxi on the other side we could transfer to (clever eh?). That when I noticed the seventy or so mean looking campesinos hiding in the bushes, clearly waiting for someone to try crossing. Managing to sneak past by disguising myself as a stupid gringo who’s lost and doesn’t know what’s going on (quite easy that) I established that yes there were taxis to go.

So I rushed back, only to find that quite a few vehicles had now been stopped, and the people were clearly as frustrated as I. At that point a horn sounded on the other side, and like a call to battle all of us rushed to the blockade and started moving the trees and stones which blocked the road. Sufficient room clearly, everyone jumped to their cars to get through before the stunned campesinos could figure out what had happened and think about retaliation. Our taxi driver, however, was nowhere to be seen - aarrrghhh! We stood on the horn and saw him running up the road back towards us, we all hopped in and off we went through the blockade, grinning happily at the bemused protestors as we sped off to Sucre.

So this story is actually about Sucre and not the Salari. After taking 22 hours to get to Sucre, it was now Sat afternoon and we gave up any hope of getting to Tupiza for the tour and checked into a pretty reasonable hotel to plan our return to Cbba - not knowing if or when that might be. First stop travel agents got us two tickets via Santa Cruz not La Paz (horray), but not until Tuesday (boo).

Sucre is a nice place - attractive old colonial buildings and a nice relaxed feel to the place, but not actually that cold. We went around and saw a few of the sights (nice Casa de La Libertad which is very central to Bolivia gaining its independence), great plaza-like park which is surrounded but an oval 'race-track' at which go-karts, horses, small children and big ones all vie for position and speed - I can only assume hundreds get injured every year; we tried a few restaurants (great fondue we had to do twice); and we saw fascinating dinosaur tracks at a cement factory outside town (and to get to it you use the ‘dino-truck’ - very tourist but good fun).

Every day we bought a newspaper to track to progress of events, pouring over it with a dictionary in one hand to understand and a beer in the other to calm down. Every night we saw a minor mention on CNN and wondered why the world was ignoring what was going on. We checked the email and websites for the Embassies to see what they thought - the US gave in first and recommended all out, the Brits and Aussies held in there - stiff upper lip and all that, cant have the colonials telling us what to do after all eh!?

In the end we were relieved to get back to Cbba without any hitch, in only 3 hours as well. It was after talking to our volunteering organisation the next day that the decision was made, regrettably, to leave Bolivia. It was becoming too unstable. Alright things had got better and the blockades were being lifted, but we needed to get to Lima to meet Claires mum the following week and couldn’t risk not being able to get out. So it was a case of get out while we could. We hope to return to Cbba in October to finish our teaching - or at least to get our full three months out of the Country Club membership!

We never learnt what happened to the bus or ‘papi’ - I hope he survived to get home.

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Photos

Blockade near Potosi
We were so close as well, after 19 hours in the bus, this...

Blockade
The locals are very restless, but the bus passengers are really peeved by now...

Sucre
Two days later, this peaceful looking town square was the scene of mob riots at which one of the protestors was killed.

Sucre
Next morning we woke up to this passing our hotel...things are brewing.

Sucre racetrack
Local idea of fun is to get gokarts horses, kiddie karts and this thing to battle it out for space and speed around the park.

Sucre juice
Street juice, apparently yummy but watch out for the after effects...

Comments

[monica]

salar de uyuni.
I,m bolivian and october 21 I,m going to salar de uyuni, I only hope your trip will be my experince too.....I' m doing this in 2 days , because my short vacation, I'm leavin fron New York, any way ,glad you enjoy Sucre , alos of luck nex time...09,16,2006