The Rampant Ridiculousness of the Road to Rurre

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Before I write about the Pampas Tour itself, I absolutely have to write about the journey from Coroico to Rurrenabaque, one of Bolivia's most infamous bus journey's that travellers on a budget and stupid people must take if they want to see the jungle in Northern Bolivia.

Wikitravel informed me that this bus trip can take between 19 and 56 hours, purely dependent on whether there is any rain. Most people fly to Rurre because of this fact. I decided for some morbid reason to check out the bus - it was not a pleasure...

We waited at Caranavi, several kilometres from Coroico for the bus to arrive and pick us up. In true Bolivian fashion, it arrived an hour late - it had only been travelling for three hours at this point so an hour late is definitely impressive, even for Bolivia. We had passed the time kicking around a football in the road, much to the amusement of the locals. Happily on the bus at last, Ciaran and I didn't mind the wretched bumpiness of our bus that was devoid of suspension. I have a theory that Argentina sells its old buses to Paraguay where they are beaten to the point of being sold to Bolivia, nowhere more than on this trip did it appear to be so true.

After only half an hour, the bus stopped.

We stayed on the bus initially, hoping for the stop to be a typical brief one, but after sticking our heads out of the window we realised that we were going nowhere fast. A tremendous queue of traffic lay in front of us so we bailed on the bus. We were stationary for two hours, as was everything else. I have no idea if it was a scheduled stop or if perhaps the locals prevent the vehicles from leaving to force everyone to spend money in the village. Perhaps there was an accident even, we couldn´t find out. In any case, waiting for two hours after being in motion for only half an hour sucks.

We evenutally continued on as the sun slowly set over the valley, all the while the buses wheels clung desperately to the edge of the cliff that we were struggling to navigate around. At around 11pm Ciaran desperately needed the bathroom and as Bolivian buses don't stop very often, he went down to try to convince the unamused driver to stop. He was both horrified and relieved to find out that the driver had support at the front, a spotter. The driver could keep eye on the road relatively well, but a second person was required to keep him awake and to keep watch out the right hand side of the bus to warn if the vehicle drew too close the edge. A terrifying prospect.

We took sleeping pills, but for me it barely helped, it is hard to sleep on an uncomfortable seat whilst being launched in the air every few seconds due to rather large potholes. That is potholes in an unpaved rock covered track.

The sun rose after what already seemed like forever and it was an amazing change to suddenly see that the outside was now completely green with palm trees and the jungle around us. The road was no longer hanging on a cliff edge it was flat, wide and pure mud - during the night the worst had happened, it had rained.

Technically we should have arrived around 7am, but at 8am we found ourselves stuck in a mud pit. The road was bizarre, there was a wide middle mud track which had a raised mud track either side of it, we were up on one of the sides. We didn't move for a considerable amount of time and I eventually decided to change seat to get a better view of what was going on. Hanging out of a window I could see a line of vehicles all stationary, a large and strange looking tractor and directly in front of us, blocking the path, a stationary lorry, with no driver.

I spotted the driver a few minutes later as he arrived at the front of his vehicle with a pick axe and starting to use this ill-chosen tool to pathetically attempt to hack his tyre out of the mud. A large group of locals stood nearby, watching un-usefully. After a considerable amount of time the bizarre tractor decided it should be of some value, moved over and towed the truck out, followed by us. It took a pathetically long amount of time, apparently in Bolivia where problems like this happen regularly, they still have very little clue how to help themselves.

A few hours later we arrived in Rurre, a good 5-6 hours late. If you Google Map the route from La Paz to Rurre, which assumes that the road is an actual road, the total journey time is suggested to be 5:30 hours - in total it had taken 24 hours.

It was an infuriating journey, a hard journey, a spine breaking, mud-sticking, wretched and one that gave no sleep. BUT - I can't say it wasn't interesting and we did make it to Rurrenabaque!

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