The Bolivian people have the remarkable national character trait of being quiet, closed, and almost imperturbable, and the reason behind this unique South American character remained a complete mystery even after two weeks of traveling in the Southern part of the country. One afternoon on a backroad local bus, however, it became startling clear to me that there passivity was grounded in necessity- to stay sane in this chaotic infra-structure void one must be ready to accept the cruelest absurdity with a disinterested smile.
A number of Bolivians had told me that if near Cochabamba, I absolutely had to visit the nearby rainforest6 region Chapares, famous for its startling waterfalls, rainforest ecosystem, and importance on the cocaine trafficing route. With this recommendation in mind I boarded a local bus with a new German travel companion bound for the pueblo Villa Turino and ended up with a crash course in Bolivian road psychology.
First, a word on bus travel in Bolivia- it is a chaotic adreneline rush that would put a rollercoaster to shame. The buses are typically cramped and full of seats in various states of disrepair, from being unable to lean back to having only sharp, rusty screws where an armrest should be. Luggage space may or may not be available below deck (most Bolivians bring their belongings aboard in shopping bags and leave them in the aisle) and most often bigh bags end up tied under a tarp on the roof. Furthermore, regional circuit buses like the Chapares bus do not depart from a terminal, they simply congregate on a chaotic street corner and have to fight with taxis, vendors, pedestrians and other cars to pull up to their starting point, so it can be an enorous challenge to know exactly which bus you're boarding. One of the strangest things, however, is how these distance buses operate on an unwritten and, to the uninitiated, utterly unorganized and improvised, local infrastructure. Buses will routinely stop to pick up hitch-hikers on isolated backroads, and the ¨bus stops¨ in certain pueblos are nothing more than an unmarked streetcorner where someone knows to wait for the long distance line bus at 3 in the morning. It is not uncommon to be on a bus as it stops at an unmarked forest house only to see the driver jump out, open the storage area, and hand off a large bag of something to the owner who seemed to be expecting him on a piece of side business. All legitimate, I hope. The roads themselves would satisfy any adreneline junkie. They are almost always a mixture of asphalt and dirt mixed with potholes and the occassional landslide. To make things even more interesting, even buses regularly pass slower traffic on the wrong side of the road over blind corners, even if only to get one car ahead in dead gridlock, and on this trip I even witness a van pass another sedan as the sedan was passing another car... and we barelñy made it back omn the right side before a truck shot by wailing on its horn. Horns here are not exactly for avoiding accidents, but for expressing anything from ¨Hi there, this is a lonely road, isn't it?¨to Ï am going to run you right off this road¨ or ¨Just in case someone is around, I'm still here.¨
On this particular busride to Chapares, we ran into a traffic backup in the middle of the moutain rainforest that seemed clealy not to be moving- most cars had turned off there engines and drivers were idling around outside open doors. After a few minutes stopped, however, most of the smaller vehicles, driving like true Bolivianos, simply began to press up on the opposite side of the road as if simply by crossing the yellow line they could overtake whatever road calamity lay ahead. After a moment`s hesitation, our bus, too, joined the forward press around a curve until we came around the next curve and found ourselves in total gridlock... both lanes full of honking cars at every angle not moving anywhere on a narrow mountain road without any shoulder. We spent three hours trapped right there, unable even to get back on the right side of the road because the complete congestion, in what could easily have been a nightmare of Orwellian proportions in thefast paced life in the States.I noticed something very odd, however. This crowded bus never receded into panic. People continued to murmur and laugh at precisely the same volume that they had before. No babies cried. Drivers and passengers were hanging out on the side of the road, joking with each other, peeing over the edge, shooting the shit. Nobody lost their cool, it was just an unavoidable obstacle on the rocky road of life.
When some people finally did begin moving, those in the streets converted into improvised traffic controllers who would direct trucks and our bus into unthinkable manuevers to allow opposing traffic through. When we did finally pass the accident several miles ahead, we found a gigantic boulder that had apparently fallen onto a large truck, and the hold up had occured while what must have been a ton of surrounding drivers pushed the rock to the side of the road in a pouring tropical thunderstorm to allow traffic through. No police or officials ever arrived, all of the organization and repair was done by people who happened to be on the road.
Overall, the 3 hour bus ride to Villa Tunari took us 8 hours, and we didn`t even end up doing anything there because it was raining so hard, but the whole experience taught me an awful lot about how this society operates almost without real government organization and infrastructure. There was a military checkpoint not 10 miles back that could have saved us hours, but they seemed only intent on checking for coca. People are left by the goverment to fend for themselves resulting in tons of informal, unliscened and somewhat successful systems that people create for transportation, business and nearly every aspect of their lives.
I got another 1st hand inpression of the road situation in the country yesterday when I took a downhill mountain bike tour of ´The World´s Most Dangerous Road," so named because up until it was shut down in 2006 it resorded the highest number of causualties of any road in the world.This beautiful, almost 60 kilometer downhill ride began in the Andean peaks above La Paz at 4700 meter, or nearly 15,000 feet of altitude, and ended at only 1300 meter! The road cleaves directly to the moutain hillsides for stunning beauty but also making it extremely susceptitble to landslides, particularly since on rainy days (like yesterday) the road actaully passes through waterfalls, making for some incredible biking but a terrifying bus ride. The experience was incredible but sobering, especially when we stopped at one particularly dangerous curve and the guide informed us that in 2002 alone 40 people died at that curve, making 2002 the worst year with over 100 deaths. It was a cross section of the extremes that Bolivia abounds- frigid alpine meets tropical heat, extreme poverty catering to a tourist frenzy, recreational sports occuring on the site of genuine human suffering at the hands of a brutal environment.
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