In the latest James Bond film he finds himself stuck in the middle of the Bolivian desert. Luckily he treks to the nearest road and waves down a local bus straight away that takes him back to La Paz. (He travels all over the world but he never seems to have any luggage with him – certainly not 30 kilos worth of packs strapped to the front and back of him, I think that would ruin the tux, you see). He doesn’t have to quibble with the driver about paying for a 17 Boliviano fare with a 20 Boliviano note. And if he did he would do it in confident, fluent Spanish. He’d probably just tell the driver to keep the change (I tried that once in Argentina and I wasn’t allowed – ‘Look, I don’t want the change, just let us pay too much and get on the bus!’ – ‘No, no es posible!’).
We booked a bus a day in advance – it took us 3 trips to various offices, to get a ‘cama’ bus (and one that hopefully wouldn’t crash off the side of a mountain) from Samaipata to Sucre. Cama means ‘bed’ but in the bus sense it really means ‘seats that recline a bit’. Then, on the day of travel, there was another ‘strike’ somewhere and we had to wait 3 hours for the bus to arrive. But Bond can get one straight away in the middle of the desert!
As I stood in the middle of the road, waiting to wave our bus down, other buses were stopping for toilet breaks, food and seemingly to jettison any rubbish they had out of the windows and onto the road. It was like a pirate ship where the crew has been told the ship is sinking and they have to lump all non-essentials overboard to prolong the inevitable. They were firing plastic bags and bottles out of the windows as if the driver had told them that the bus was going to sink into the tarmac unless they lightened the load. The local stray dogs then shredded the bags to pieces in a desperate attempt to find a few crumbs... including the nappy that was thrown out.
The toilet break for men involved surrounding said buses and urinating around them. When the buses all left (with no sign of ours) there was a load of rubbish, several wet patches on the ground and the smell of wee.
Probably not Bolivia’s finest hour.
When we finally boarded the bus I had to sit next to a very smelly woman (not Karen!).
(Karen: Although it soon might be. I’ve still not found any shower gel in this country which probably explains why the woman sitting next to Ross smelt as she did!) Bond gets to sit next to the stunning Bolivian superspy but I had to hold my nose all night to avoid the smell of sweat and poo. Normally, you can get used to a bad smell but I kept getting horrible wafts of it, I think this was because she was also flatulent.
When Bond arrives in La Paz he goes to a really swanky hotel ‘cos he won’t stay in the budget accommodation (I thought he was supposed to be all tough) and tells them he’s a teacher on sabbatical who’s won the lottery (because he has an expenses account an MP would be envious of – you can imagine the Daily Mail’s feigned indignation: ‘The Daily Mail can exclusively reveal that an unnamed MI6 agent lost millions of pounds of tax payers’ money in a reckless visit to a high class casino’... and its target audience would tut and grumble over their cornflakes).
I am a teacher on sabbatical too but I don’t have an MI6 expenses account or a lottery win to fall back on. Despite this we decided to find a nice hotel for a change – ‘cos I’ve been a birthday boy don’t you know? – and take it easy for a few days, watching telly etc.
One thing we did do, however, was head out to Cretaceous Park: a bit like Jurassic Park, except the dinosaurs are made of papier mache or something. This is a park developed in honour of the hundreds of dino footprints nearby. A strange bit of tectonic action has splintered the footprint covered ground and thrust it upwards into an almost vertical position. From the Park you can observe the many different tracks of dinosaurs that appear to have been bitten by radioactive spiders and have taken to walking up walls! Cool!
The models of the dinosaurios were pretty realistic, complete with biological details – including anuses(?!). I got excited (cos it was a park full of dinosaurs!!!!) and raced in, first off the bus. Karen had trouble keeping up as I photographed every dinosaur in the park before anyone else had even got in! Unfortunately, this meant we were done first and had a loooooong wait for the return bus. Fortunately, this meant that we had to kill time by taking a second tour around Cretaceous Park. Hooray! Lucky Karen... that’ll get her back for all the pictures of guinea pigs/anything cute!
But then she got her own back again by making me go to see the new Harry Potter film, which I secretly enjoyed a lot - despite the parents who insisted on bringing in run-around/crying/chattering 3/4 year olds for a film that clearly scared them and one in which they couldn’t even read the Spanish subtitles! What was the point in that?! And it’s 2 and a half hours long!!! Mmmmmmerrrrrr!
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