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Published: January 10th 2008
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Smiling at the start of our journey....
funnily enough the smiles didnt last too long So i bet you're all itching to know how the 18 hour bus ride from La Paz to Santa Cruz went eh?
Well funnily enough, as with most of my blogs....it wasnt quite as straight forward as you´d think!
It all started 7pm at La Paz bus terminal.......(cue U.S style hazy flashback music etc) It actually started off ok, we jumped onboard and the seats reclined big time, we were all joking about travelling in style!! The overnight journey out of La Paz began as planned. Pretty much the next 12 hours were spent drifting in and out of conciousness, eating and drinking. I started coming to properly at about 6.30 the following morning, we were back in the lowlands and had descended about 3200 metres to 200m above sea level, also we were driving through a jungle so awesome scenery! AND we were just under 12 hours in. Result only 4 more hours to go! or so i thought.
This is pretty much where it all started to go wrong.
Just then as we are approaching a tiny village called Shinahota (a name that will live with me for a long time let me telll you!)
Roadblock!
7am on the 7th January the coach comes to a complete standstill. The reason? Well for those of you that have been reading my blogs you will realise that obviously it´s a roadblock as thats pretty much all people seem to do in this country!! This time it´s taxi drivers. Apparantly something to do with their insurance premiums or summat. It gets worse though, when we go to have a look there are literally hundreds of cabs blocking the road. To compound matters (as we had considered walking through the block and seeing if we could get a scab to give us a lift at the other side!) the next three towns were all doing the same thing!
And so it begins, the monotonous waiting game...now for those of you that have been to music festivals, imagine that final day when not only do you stink, its hot, you are all cramped together, the traffic in the car park is going nowhere fast and you´re tired and hungry. Well its a bit like that only the humidity is making you sweat despite the fact you are sat perfectly still, the only food you can buy comes in the form of crisps and biscuits and
"we´re on the road to nowhere!"
10pm on the 7th of January...you starting to see a recurring theme here...... we literally have no idea if we are moving any time soon! (there are rumours that they have done this for a week before!)
The heat is so unbearable, we all have our tops off (calm down ladies) but even that doesn´t stop the sweat! (for those off you keeping tabs on the hair diaries, you should know that jungle humidity is no friend to my hair...it pretty much takes on a huge, curly life of it´s own!) The choices are ñimited to A) sit on the hot, stuffy coach and sweat your tits off or B) get off the coach sit outside on the hot concrete slab and...surprise, surprise.....sweat your tits off!
At around 7pm, like the daylight, hope that we are going anywhere today is starting to fade. Thats when we hear the rallying cry of "vamos, vamos!" (it means lets go in spanish!) at this we are jumping around excitedly in the anticipation that our hell could soon be over!)
This hope is short lived, all that actually happens is a few bus drivers and passengers go to counter protest against the cabbies (and rightly so there are small children and babies out with their
families witing to get moving...seriously harsh) This comes to no avail, where are the bloody Bolivian Mitchell brothers when you need them! ( it gets so bad that me and chris consider getting some keys in our hands and start windmilling into the cabbies, the fuc****!...obviously though there´s hundreds of them and only 3 of us lads, they wouldnt have a chance it just didnt seem fair to them!)
Well its 10pm now, its still as humid as hell and we are all feeling jaded and sickly, particularly me as i´ve stuffed myself with cheesy wotsit style snacks and oreo cookies. At least it cant get any worse you say...wrong, the mossies are starting to bite, the bats are circling and this is whan Brad hops off the bus and tells us its full of cockroaches....joy. At this point we are pretty much past caring, we climb back on the bus exhausted in an attempt to get some sleep and see what happens in the morning. A violent storm in the middle of the night pretty much keeps us awake anyhoo and the thunder is louder than slipknot in a tunnel!
So 7am the following morning i wake
and oh my god i cant believe it, its like a dream come true we are moving!! Oh no wait we are still sat in exactly the same f*****g position as we have been for the last 24 hours!!
Im thinking i may as well try to stay asleep as long as possible when at 8:30, some 25 and a half hours since we stopped, the cabbies move and the drivers scream for everyone to get on board! its no joke this time, we dont need telling twice! We are back on our way to Santa Cruz!
We arrive around 2pm, wicked. Its only taken us about 43 hours to get here.
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ben
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nightmare!!!
murder on the dancefloor lads...some fucker killed the groove!!!