Unexpected Memories

I’m sitting on the edge of a dirt road in Potolo, a small village in Bolivia, having just finished a two day trek to the Maragua Crater. The bus is two hours late and I’ve been progressively shredding clothing as the sun has climbed higher into the sky. Suddenly, the silence is pierced by the screech of the donkey tied up across the road. It really is the strangest sound, and I spend a while thinking about whether there are any other animals that sound like they’re dying when they’re not, but come up blank. The donkey across the road has now set off all the other donkeys in the town and the hills bounce the noise through the valley.
A local woman walks towards me holding a weaving. Her skirts and apron are dusty and black plaits hang on either side of her face. She’s trying to sell me the weaving and since I am in a town known for weaving I decide to buy it. We barter haltingly in Spanish and settle on a price. I can tell she is ecstatic about selling six months’ worth of work as her gap-toothed grin stays on her face and she invites me into her mud-brick house for lunch.
I gratefully accept and soon enough she sets a plate before me containing two boiled potatoes, a hard-boiled egg and an ear of corn. They are all fresh from the garden and taste delicious. After lunch she sits in front of some sticks, which turn out to be her home-made loom. As she shows me how she weaves, chickens are scratching around us for food, and I am fascinated.
Intermittently, I dart back into the house and stick my head out the front door when I hear an engine. Eventually, it actually is the bus, and I yell and chase it down the road but it is full and doesn’t stop. I say a big thank-you to the woman and climb into the next vehicle that comes along - a produce truck. It’s already quite full of people, corn and one sheep which ends up sitting on top of me as more and more people climb aboard to get to the market to sell their wares the next day.
The sheep is very fidgety and I’m fighting for space with a woman who keeps drifting off and falling face first into a sack of corn at which point she jerks awake and elbows me for more room. The man on my other side is chewing coca throughout the three hour trip and as his mouth gets greener I’m less tempted to ask for some. The clouds are getting blacker and blacker but we make it back in time to beat the rain and as I climb down stiffly from the truck, I realize I’ve just had an amazing day and it’s all because the bus never came.