Adventures on the Altiplano

   After Uyuni we took a bus at a civilised hour to Potosi.  We had toyed with the idea of a tour into the mines of Cerro Rico, but perhaps thankfully we were rained out for our two days in town.  We have resolved to watch “The Devil’s Miner” at some later date instead.  From Potosi we travelled to Sucre, the delightful capital of Bolivia.  On our arrival on Saturday night everyone was keen to tell us about the amazing Sunday market in Tarabuco, 65km to the South East. 

   We set out early in the morning on Palm Sunday, having been assured that local transport was just as easy and half the price of the tourist buses.  After 40 minutes of slow progress we found ourselves at a standstill in the midst of a traffic blockage caused by a local car rally (now that would have been worth seeing).  As soon as traffic started to move our bus suffered a blow out and pulled over to change the tyre. 

   Human nature is a funny thing.  Bus drivers in Bolivia find it hard to go anywhere unless all their seats are taken and the standing room is oversubscribed.  As soon as the bus pulled over the standing passengers all disembarked and we were about to follow until we noticed everyone else remained seated.  With at least another hour to go, no-one wanted to be mixed up with the standing passengers. 

   The jack turned out to be incapable of lifting an admittedly fully-loaded bus.  The driver’s solution was to wedge rocks underneath the bus and dig around the tyre.   A few people jumped ship at that point, but not us.  Kizzy was determined to keep her seat.  I figured that if the bus did roll over it would head straight for the waiting crowd, in which case being in the bus would have to be better than being under it. 

   With cheers from our fellow passengers the spare tyre was fixed in place, the rocks removed and the rubber lowered back to the road, only to find the spare was also flat.  Knowing a hopeless cause when we saw one, everyone was out of the bus now.  An enterprising truck driver pulled over, knowing an opportunity when he saw one and offered to take us all to Tarabuco for nearly the same price as the bus ticket. 

   Twenty-six people, including a grandmother and an infant, can fit into the back of a modest sized flat-bed truck.  It was probably not a good idea, and I suspect it might not have been covered by our travel insurance.  It was certainly not a comfortable way to travel but we had the wind in our hair, and I spent most of the next hour grinning manically at Kizzy trying my best to give the impression that this was an exciting adventure. 

   When we arrived in Tarabuco we joined dozens of other tourists looking somewhat bewildered as to why they had left the beautiful city of Sucre for such a nowhere destination.  The highlight of the town was the rather gory monument to independence from Spain.  After poking around for a token 90 minutes we set off back to Sucre.  We were chauffer driven by an enterprising local student who had been in town for a family get-together.  At first we thought he was trying to make a profit but as the journey progressed it was clear he needed our money just to keep the car running.  I don’t quite understand the mechanics of it, perhaps in a case of wilful blindness, but every twenty minutes the steering got so bad he had to pull over and hammer at the front wheel.  A little over an hour later we made our fifth stop of the journey arriving safely back at our hostel.