Another Thing That You Don't Want Happening in the Middle of the Night

Like most stories, this one starts before the event in focus actually occurs. It this case, it begins in a different country, Argentina. McHale, Tom, and I needed to cross into Bolivia on foot. The border was about a 20 minute walk from the center of town. McHale and I had no problems leaving, but it turned out that Tom hadn't gotten a entry stamp. That meant that he was in the country illegally. Which meant that he couldn't leave without paying a fine. A 50 peso fine (about $17). We had only 22 pesos between the three of us, since we spent down the local currency because we were leaving the country. They didn't have a currency exchange. They didn't accept dollars. And town was so far away.

But we were so close to the border.

McHale and I had to cross the border, enter Bolivia, change money, cross back to Argentina, ransom Tom and his passport, then return to Bolivia. Not a problem, we had plenty of time, like an hour and a half. Or did we? Once in Bolivia we learned about the time change. The border didn't close at 6PM Argentine time, but at 6PM Bolivian time, which was 5PM in Argentina. In half an hour.

But we made it across the border and rushed to the bus station to find a bus to Potosi. No luck. We had missed the bus by minutes (stupid border troubles). So we spent the night in the border town. There was a morning bus to Potosi, but we decided just to take morning bus to Tupiza and spend the day there and take the night bus to Potosi from there.

Tupiza was lovely. We spent a full day hiking. We saw goats.

Night bus to Potosi. It was supposed to leave at 9PM. It left at 10PM. The seats were full, as was the aisle (the luxury of Argentinian buses was a thing of the past). At the first police stop, some more women wanted to get on, but when they tried to squeeze their way on, there was an uproar from the other passengers. Apparently the driver makes extra money for himself by selling extra “tickets.” The women somehow made room for themselves.

All was well until about 2AM when I was woken up with a thud. Then the bus started to tip over. Shit, I thought, we're going to fall off a cliff. It managed to stop at a 45 degree angle. Everyone was yelling to go slowly, as not to upset the balance. We slowly exited the bus. Half of it was in a ditch, partially submerged.

It was the middle of the night, we were in the middle of nowhere, no food, freezing cold, and the bus driver left. He just left (which I have since learned is standard in Ecuador as well - if you are a professional driver who gets in an accident you run away). We were hours from any major town. Rumor was that they didn't have a spare bus to send, so we tried to fix it ourselves. Of course, since I was a gringa who didn't speak Spanish, I had no say in the matter, though I believe I was the only engineer there. We deforested a small area (not that there was much there to begin with) to make a fire to try stay warm.

Once the sun rose, my suggestion to drain the ditch finally worked its way up the ranks and we basically destroyed the road to drain the water. Imagine one pickaxe slowly creating a canal through the compacted dirt road. We tried the push the bus upright (we meaning me and all the able bodied men), but no luck. Around 8AM we got a ride in the back of a truck full of ore going to Potosi with about 10 Argentinian backpackers and a couple old women. It was less than 300km away, but it took over 9 hours. There was as rise of 1km, thus the truck had to go very slow. And we were stopped by mining protesters that had closed the road (which I wasn't used to at the time, but now it just seems like another day Latin America).

There were about a dozen of us in the truck, sitting on our luggage, which was much softer than truck full of rocks. Once in Potosi we went to the bus company to complain. Unfortunately the bus company only refunded 1/3 of the ticket price, despite the fact that we had essentially been left to fend for ourselves. Typical.

But we had made it to Potosi.