R + D | South America

Our last day in Bolivia, we left our hotel in Uyuni at 4:30 in the morning. It was still dark, but the first light seeping into the sky gave everything a cobalt halo. The wind was coming off the Salar. Everything was gated shut. We walked through the market to get to the bus station. During the day you can barely move through the throng of people. Now, nothing moved except a few stray dogs crossing the street looking for food, and an old woman sweeping the dark sidewalk in front of her stall.

The bus from Uyuni to Atocha was your standard Bolivian rattler. The window knocking in its frame become the kind of noise that lulls you to sleep. Cold air leaked in but made you realize you were in the desert and the sun hadn´t risen yet. The campesinos all ruddy faces and black hair, smelling like hard work, eyes closed and arms folded even before the engine started–the defiant look of people who know how to survive. Some slumped over their own improvised seats, large vats of water? oil?, heaved up into the bus and heavily blocking the aisle.

It was cozy and quiet and we slept . . . for about thirty minutes. Suddenly: Spanish love-rock (blah, blah, blah mi corazon…..blah blah blah mi amor……blah blah mi alma), so loud it disorted the speakers. A thumping electronica-Andean beat, the speaker right over my head.  Danielle and I are very awake now, waiting for the driver to realize it is too loud and turn it down. The campesinos don´t budge, just another inconvenience to endure silently. Danielle approaches the door separating the driver from his human cargo. It´s locked. She knocks. No reply. The music blares for two more hours. We adapt and sleep.

The bus stops now and then. Three on, one off. The sun is up now and shining onto the vast nothing. Low yellow shrubs and sand. Nothing else. No trees, no plants, no water, no life. Occassionaly a few golden brown vicunas (impala-like) hurtle off in the distance. You can make them out only because they move so suddenly. Nada for miles in every direction. People get off and start walking into emptiness, the woman with huge pink and blue blanketed bundles tied to their backs (I always think there are babies in there, but they´re big and heavy enough to house half a kindergarten. Potatoes? Squashes? Wood?). The men in baseball caps, thick jackets, and jeans.

At some point I woke up and the road had disappeared. We were driving through a valley on a dried river bed. It was wide, maybe forty meters across, but bone dry. Only pieces of plastic trash that looked like they had been washed away from somewhere, but no water to wash it anywhere in sight. The valley walls were muddy, rocky, and steep. More like a canyon. We drove for another hour or so until we came to Atocha.

Atocha is a mining pueblito at the foot of an enormous dam holding back what must be a lot of water. I don´t know how you could live there without dreaming every night of that dam breaking.

The day we arrived in Atocha the toilet paper truck was in town. Thousands of rolls of pink papel higenico piled high in a tough-looking lorry and stacks of the stuff outside every tienda along the main street. Fittingly, our main activity in Atocha was using the bathroom (before catching our bus on to Tupiza). At the bano publico along the train tracks a purchase of pink paper had been made by the elderly, toothless owner, now returning with a wheelbarrow-load of the pink rolls. His gnarled wife was sitting at the entrance selling a ticket inside. I had my first solid bowel movement in weeks, but had to use my own private supply of white toilet paper as my 50 centavos entrance fee only got me a few folds of the pink stuff. I left the two of them and the bathroom business amidst what sounded like an argument over how much he had paid for their month supply of inventory. Along the train tracks it was obvoius that not everyone in town was a customer.

The saltenas (baked potato-filled pastries) were selling like hot cakes and the little old lady carrying them around in a wooden tray-like box hanging from her neck was doing so well she came and asked me if I could break a fifty Boliviano note. It´s not the first time I´ve looked at an old indiginista and thought that it pays to cook well.

For the second leg of our journey (Atocha to Tupiza) we were crammed into a Toyota 4X4 – eleven of us and a large blanketed, colorful bundle of some edible cargo resting on my left foot. The bus company that brought us to Atocha, “11 de Julio” transferred us to the company “12 de Octubre.” I thought that with the 40 lbs. bundle of veggies on my foot, the trip might indeed seem like three months and a day. I couldn´t move my foot out from under the bundle becuase every bit of free space was occupied by human limb and body. Just when I thought we were stuffed in well beyond anything safe and reasonable, I realized that we were actually slated for twelve and were waiting for one more passenger.

A lengthy conversation in Spanish ensued which brought out the owner and eventually he gave his blessing to let the car go with eleven adults and a nino (rather than the full cohort of twelve adults). The 1980´s Landcruiser was definitely designed for no more than eight. It was not comfortable or safe. Danielle and the San Franciscan hipster stuffed in the back with us (seats 9 and 10) both got car sick, despite preventative Gravol (Dramamine). What a waste of good saltenas.

The road was muy peligroso cutting into and over a range of something between mountains and hills, steep, steep drops on either side, and we were hauling ass. “Como nos sigue del diablo.” All three gringos in the back commented that this is what SUVs are supposed to be used for.

Eventually we made it to Tupiza, last stop before the Argentine border. A Welshman asked me for a calculator so he could figure out the exchange rate. I blithely told him it was three pesos to the dollar and eight Bolivianos to the dollar making it three pesos to eight Bolivianos. He was not impressed and told me it was 3.05 pesos to the dollar. I walked away ashamed and approached the ticket window advertising the only direct bus to the border. An unhappy cusotmer service employee gave me a knowing look that she was about to make my life very difficult. In Spanish:

Me:”Hola we are tyring to get to the border today. Is this where I buy bus tickets?”
Her: “Yes.”
Me: “Bueno. How much are they?”
Her: “30 Bolivianos.”
Me: “Bueno. Is there a bus today?”
Her:”Yes.”
Me:”What time?”
Her:”2:30.”
Me:”Is it direct to La Villazon at the border?”
Her: “Yes.”
Me: “Bueno. I´ll take two seats please.¨
Her:”There are no seats left.”

The Welsh banker overheard this and interjected: “Bolivians only answer the question you ask them.” He was right. She had failed to mention that we could stand in the aisle if we wanted to, which only occured to us as the last Israeli body-checked us to get on the bus and took up the remaining aisle space. We watched the bus pull away and Argentina seemed further away than it had all day. We consoled ourselves that at least we wouldn´t have to endure the Israelis for two hours on a crowded bus.

I soon found out that we were in luck. Quite a few other companies had buses heading South (from Potosi) to the border with stops here in Tupiza at 3 p.m. or so. Heeding the Welshman´s advice I began asking all the detailed questions of another grumpy office attendant, repeating the words “Hoy (today), aqui (here), and no problema si (no problem right?)” a lot. Somewhere in her replies she used the word bloqueado which sounded like something that would keep either us from the bus or the bus from the border. Indeed the local policia nacional officer stationed at the bus terminal confirmed that there was a blockade outside of Potosi, a political demonstration, blocking all traffic that might be headed this way. The Bolivians waiting for the same connection all seemed to know this and were discussing alternate plans amongst themselves. These somehow involved cargo trucks.

It was getting frustrating. Everyone had a different answer. Eventually, I made a public inquiry to a gathering of the discussants “¿Nadie sabe nada, si? (Nobody knows anything, right?) A unanimous and knowing “si” confirmed that it was totally normal that none of the bus companies knew if their own buses had left Potosi that morning. It was totally normal that the bus companies couldn´t telephone Potosi or the bus drivers and ask. It was totally normal that the highway policeman had no idea either. It was totally normal that he couldn´t or wouldn´t phone his highway policeman associates in Potosi or along the highway and find out. It was totally normal that the Bolivians were being being kept in the dark. The only abnormal thing was that we gringos were getting irritated. Like the campesinos, the normal thing to do was to shrug and wait.

We waited and waited and eventually a bus that had squeezed through the blockade pulled in and as the sun was sinking into the Salar we made it to the Bolivian-Argentine border. A sea of poverty, saltenas, and pink toilet paper behind us.