Buses through Bolivia

The morning was similar to most mornings before a journey. I awoke unnecessarily early to ensure I had an hour to pack my bag. Why i'm not sure, as with a shitty hangover and my clothes everywhere I can do it in 45 minutes. Sober with everything in piles to be thrown straight into my bag requires no more than 10 minutes if I'm meticulous. So, with breakfast out the way and 50 minutes to spare I wandered out into the streets of Uyuni in search of an Internet café. Everything was closed, so I sat for an hour and a half shivering in the cold waiting for my bus. The bus came and was packed with tourists, part of a tour group from what I could gather. They were all complaining about the state of the bus and how there was no food. Sat in the back with the Bolivians I was struck with a kind of pride. I was the scruffy independent traveller tutting to myself about a tourist group with their ridiculous expectations of the third world country they were passing through. This is where the real travelling began. I was a traveller.

The bus set off and I sat marvelling out the window at the ragged, rocky and mountainous scenery the passed by. Next to me sat an old toothless Bolivian man in his best suit, putting coca leaves into his mouth. He offered me some, which I gladly accepted as the altitude was increasing rapidly as the scraggy Bolivian bus swung around bends like Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone. They were fresh and he told me that they had been picked that morning. I stuffed a few in my cheek and put some of the ash in that activated it. He gave me a toothless grin and began to show me how to remove the leaf from the stem and follow the process correctly. After reciprocating with my knowledge he mumbled something with a smile and continued to go about his well practiced process.

With a cheek full of coca and viewpoint out of the window I sat and watched the scenery unveil itself. The nature of the land never changed but the abundance of nothingness began to become astounding. Mountain upon mountain passed by, leading to down to the dry riverbeds that had once fed the land, now resigned to dry canyons cut with cacti. It became clear that Bolivia had once, many years before the Spanish, and probably even the Incas flourished with greenery and great lakes. Now the brightly clad farmers leading a few measley sheep through the hills struggled for a livelihood on a land that gave them nothing. This was Bolivia.

After six hours of swinging around the mountainsides in the rusted bus, we arrived in Potosi, another example of Bolivian former glories left scrabbling under the domineering mountain which had once made it the richest city in the world.