The bus to Rurrenabaque, Bolivia didn’t have any chickens on it.... Although it did leave 2 hours late, have 5 or 6 giant bags strapped to the roof 3 or 4 full gas canisters in under the passengers, no air conditioning, and no bathroom. Oh, and did I mention the family of four sitting occupying the 2 seats in front of me, or the woman with the cage and parrot across the isle. If you can imagine it was quite a trip.
It was a 19 hour trip in fact. But the driver was nice and stopped twice to let us pee... Ok, so the first time he started to drive away while 15 or 20 of the passengers were still out side the bus, but that’s beside the point. The point is that he only stopped twice in 19 hours.
I personally chose not to ingest any liquids starting the night before, sensing the impending lack of restrooms. But, my personal bathroom story (if you can’t tell bathrooms have become much more important to me... rather, I just seem to be thinking about them much more. My life seems to now revolve around figuring out when I might see the next restroom, and strictly calculating exactly how much liquid I can ingest so as to not have pee before making it there. Needless to say, the vast majority of the time I am wickedly dehydrated). So, back to one of the highlights of my bus trip (and, had I only been quicker, it would have been the best picture of the trip)
About 3 hours into the drive the 2 year old boy, a member of the family of four occupying the two seats in front of me, needed to use the lavatory. Well, with the window open, his mother holding him up there, and his 7 year old sister standing on his mothers knees grinning at me, he went for it. With a huge smile and a yellow arc, the little guy relieved himself out the window. Frankly, it would have been an amazing picture... photo of a lifetime. Unfortunately, I missed it due to the fact that I was preoccupied making sure that my window was firmly shut so as to not receive any downwind spray. Now all I have is a priceless memory.
Oh, but this bus ride was full of priceless memories... 19hours worth in fact, since sleeping wasn’t really an option (the bus being designed for the average Bolivian, 5´ 2” or so, being 5’9”, my knees were in constant contact with the chair in front of me, and the afore mentioned 2 year old really enjoyed leaning over the seat, putting him approximately 11 inches from my face).
Before leaving, I was told that the ride would be great because the first 4 hours were paved. Well, what I heard was “the last 15 hours are unpaved.” No one mentioned that they were unpaved on the “death road” (it is called this because it is the most dangerous road in the world and an average of 200 people die on it each year... thankfully I learned this fact after exiting the bus) There were some spectacular views of the shear drop offs (no guard rail) from the 17 foot wide dirt road (2 way of course) and if that wasn’t enough to keep me from sleeping, the 95 + degree heat ensured it. Oh, and no air-conditioning meant all the windows were open the entire time… on the dirt road. Little sand dunes were beginning to form on the floor, and all my clothes turned the same color... dirt.
If you can imagine, upon arriving in Rurrenbaque at 8am the following day, all I wanted was a shower and a nap. Well, I kind of got one of my 2 wishes. Due to horrible planning (I seem to be having a bout of it) I was to start my pampas tour that day. Actually, the tour was supposed to have started at 7am that morning, but my bus was on Bolivian time and therefore late. Incase you´re wondering, the pampas are grass lands with lots of animals. From the “bus station” (really just where the bus stopped somewhere in the middle of town) I went directly to the tour office and was told there was a shower and I had an hour to clean up and get breakfast before heading off on my pampas tour.
It was not a shower. Yes, while it was a room with a shower head, and apparently at one time there had been water (I could tell this from the cloud of mosquitos swarming over my head) in reality I have seen sinks with more water pressure. I did not get clean. But, it turned out it didn’t really matter, because I was going to get to spend the next 3 hours sitting bitch, on yet another dirt road, shoved in a range rover with the 6 other people on my tour, a cook and a driver (who would later try and “forget” to give me my 40 bolivianos change from the park entrance fee) Ahh, more sitting.
A short lunch, then, you guessed it, more sitting. This time in a dug out canoe. Yes, it sounds really neat. For about 10 minutes it was… then I realized that the seat was extremely hard, there is no way to get comfortable, I had been sitting for a total of over 26 hours and I still had 4 hours left to go… but luckily, instead of views of a 2,000ft sheer drop off, impending death, and a two year old relieving himself, I’m looking at a beautiful river full of caiman, capybara, egrets, and trees full of monkeys. I’d say the bus ride was worth it.
