R + D | South America

Say you´re on a sixteen hour bus ride in Bolivia and you need to take a piss.

Now, we all know this wouldn´t happen very often because, like a seasoned South American traveler, you wouldn´t drink anything for hours prior to any bus ride.

But just say you had to go…like twelve hours into the ride. A really pressing need.

Option 1 would be to timidly approach the bus driver and ask in your best Spanish, with the whole bus listening, if you could please delay everyone else´s arrival to get off the bus and in front of all those craning necks pee on the back tire.

Option 2 would be to try the bathroom on the bus.

Now most Bolivian buses, even those sixteen hour overnight babies, don´t have a bathroom on the bus. But let´s say you shelled out some cash, did your homework, and got on a bus with a bathroom. You´re in seat 7 near the front and the bathroom is behind seat 27 in the back. You get up and wake up the six or so people sleeping in the middle aisle, you avoid the box of chirping chicks, you somersualt over the potato sacks, and oil drums, lift up and go under the boxes of contraband, and finally you get to the door.

You put your hand on the bathroom door and your bladder momentarily stops spasming. Jiggle, jiggle. The door´s locked.

So you make your way back to the front of the bus, I mean you wake up six sleeping Bolivianos sprawled out in the aisle, you avoid the chickens and the potatoes and the oil drums and you get under and then over the boxes, and you get to the conductor and you ask for the key and then you go back waking up your six friends again (“la ultima vez senor”) and you get to the bathroom and you unlock the door.

You really need to pee. It´s been twelve and a half hours now and you have good kidneys. Problem is you also have a good nose and your little bouncing cubicle smells like a two day old diaper (after they start eating meat).

But you also have a good noggin´and you anticipated this and you brought Tiger Balm and you apply it to your nostrils and now it smells lovely, like someone rubbing you down at a rave.

So you take a nice long urinar to the sweet smell of eucalyptus and menthol only being thrown off the throne by the bucking bus twice. Just a few bruises.

You´re a girl by the way.

Let´s say you´re really well organized and you remembered to bring toilet paper (the pink Bolivian kind, one-ply) and you have it with you and you clean yourself up and you reach for the trash can. (In South America you NEVER put toilet paper in the toilet. Always in the little plastic bin al lado).

There´s no trash can. So you look around to make sure no one is watching and you flush it. Ahhhh sweet heavens! You´ve peed.

Option 3, of course, is you do as the Bolivians do and piss wherever and whenever you please no matter who´s watching or how much the posted fine for peeing is.

But god help you if you have the shits.