How our plans went wrong in a very comical way

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After the festival had finished and we’d shared a delicious pizza in an Italian restaurant the day started to turn into a comedy of errors for us both which wasn't quite as funny as the water bombs, foam or pistols were combined, although I still managed to find it hilarious. The festival had started four hours later than it was due (I think waiting four hours is quite normal in Bolivian culture – the notion of time is very different to general European culture) but we had banked on getting to Tiahanacu in the afternoon and hit some museums on pre-Inca tribes. By the time we were ready to go after the festival, had eaten, collected our bags and taken them up to Ronald’s aunts house at the top of La Paz and walked to find a trufe which at the time were either diverted due to the roads been closed or full, it was getting late.

First of all, on leaving the restaurant a kid from a passing car, opened his car window and opened fire on Ronald with foam from his water pistol, Ronald got foam all down one side of his face and his left side. Not wanting to be seen to lose face by getting angry (as everybody is supposed to accept the festival with good grace) Ronald carried on walking, I was falling about laughing at him saying ‘Oh Ronald you look very handsome like that’ when a woman in the next car opened her car window and sprayed me with foam. We spent the next ten minutes being laughed at by passersby as we felt that removing the foam from our faces would go against the spirit of 'Carnaval.' That was our downfall from then on.

After walking a long way we finally found a trufe which would take us up the hill. However, halfway up the hill the driver told half the people to get out so he could get the trufe up the hill and later the passengers needed to get back in again. (it is common in La Paz for passengers to have to get out and push a bus up a hill, as many vehicles don’t have the gears or the tyres for getting up the steep hills of La Paz) We were walking down the steps from where the Trufe had dropped us off, when Ronald pointed out the excellent view of ?, the highest mountain in Bolivia. It was beautiful and capped with snow so I put my bag down to get my camera out forgetting that we had packed a bottle of wine in the bag. The bag rolled down the steps, the wine bottle broke immediately and stained the bag red and all the stuff in it, destroyed Ronald’s written itinerary and left all my stuff smelling like a Bodega..

By now it was getting dark so Ronald suggested that we stay at his Aunt’s house that evening in the hills and carry on with the journey the next morning. The problem was Ronald only had access to one room in the house and no access to the bathroom as that part of the house was locked up whilst his Aunt was on holiday. We decided to look for a café further up the hill, get a coffee, use the facilities and head back to his Aunts house to sleep and then leave early in the morning and we decided that if we saw a hostel up there we would stay there instead. We had just got in a Trufe, but after 1 minute the trufe got stuck on the hill behind a row of cars who were also stuck probably due to the festival. After 20 minutes we had moved about 2 car spaces so deciding that the trufe was stuck for the night, we decided to get out and head down the hill. We were made to pay the full fare even though we had moved 2 car spaces.

We crossed the road to find a trufe to take us back down but just at that moment all the cars decided to overtake on the other side of the road to get past the obstructions. This blocked the oncoming traffic going back down to the city centre so we couldn’t get any transport back down. One minute later our last trufe had decided to do the same as us, do a U turn in the middle of the mountain road and head back down. We got in the Trufe and I said to Ronald that we’d been unlucky so far, but not to worry because our luck was changing. Little did we know this was just the start of our luck running out.

At the next stop two very drunken men got in the trufe (after the festival) and were belching and falling about in the vehicle. They were slouching just behind us and afraid that they were going to vomit on us we moved seats. The trufe then took a long time to get down the hill with various diversions and kids spraying foam on it, and water pistoling it.

We finally got into town at about 7pm and began looking for a hostel near where we were going to take the bus from in the morning. The first hostel we found seemed fine but was fully booked, the second didn’t have wifi or internet (that is a luxury here)and generally looked run down, the third had a noisy disco at the top, the fourth had steps leading to a red curtain with a seedy red light behind it, the fifth we couldn’t get up the stairs of because a drunken person was being helped up them. We then took a trufe downtown to the sixth hostel which was called ‘crash and dash’ which Ronald not understanding what it meant said seemed fine but when I explained that it meant spend an uncomfortable night in an uncomfortable bed and get out as soon as possible in the morning he was put off as was I, so finally we found lucky hostel seven which was decent.

On entering the rooms we began having problems. We tried to open Ronald’s door to his room but it wouldn’t open and we needed to call the receptionist. When the receptionist came he just turned the handle and it magically opened so we felt like fools. It turned out we had unlocked the door but hadn’t pushed the door hard enough to open it after having spent 10 minutes locking it and unlocking it. By this time clouded by all the unfortunate events of the day we had come to believe that opening a door had been beyond our capabilities. Relieved to have finally opened the door I helped Ronald carry his bags in, it was then that I realised that we had not only lost our wine but we’d left Ronald’s umbrella at the festival too.

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