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The Pleasure of Flying Through Land

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

19 November 2005 (Saturday) – Torotoro to Cochabamba to Santa Cruz, Bolivia

It rained last night. There were lightning flashes and some thunder rumblings late in the night, but I think it only really started to pour at around 2am. In other places, I probably would not care less. But I was in Torotoro, where in the rainy season, it is impossible to go to (or leave) as the road (I am probably being too generous to describe it with this term) would be washed out. We were at the beginning of the rainy season and I was hoping my luck would stay with me, delaying the rain til I am gone. But, no… it came pattering down yesterday.

I had set the alarm clock at 5am. When it beeped, I ignored it. But later, I dreamt that I was hurriedly getting dressed to catch the 6am bus. And BINK! I opened my eyes suddenly and realised it was 5:37am and I hurriedly got dressed to catch the 6am bus.

Naturally, this being Bolivia, the buses never leave on time. But we were afraid of the immense crowd like we had when we came. No, according to the bus guys, it is ‘vacio’ (empty) in the morning, which, in their terms, actually mean all the seats are taken but no one is sitting or standing on the aisle.

We left after a 40-minute wait for last-minute passengers only to turn the corner and pick up more passengers and sacks of produces.

The first part of the trip already scared the wits out of me. There were rivers to cross! And I do not mean wimpy r-i-v-u-l-e-t-s! I mean GUSHING RUSHING rivers which the bus driver drove gingerly down the valley and the bus was literally swimming across!! No wonder the bus had such gigantic wheels, now I understand! We crossed 4 of these before getting onto the muddy track.

We did not drive for long before the bus was stuck in the wet mud of last night. Some macho men got off to help clear the mud with shovels and put stones on the wet puddles all around. After half an hour or so, the bus managed to pull through this area.

Then, I nodded off, all along half-murmuring a Buddhist chant for good luck. But soon, I was awakened by the commotion of people getting off the bus. Renaud asked what was happening. I guessed we were stuck again and had to get off to make the bus lighter.

But when I observed what had happened to the bus in my sleep, my blood turned cold. The front wheels were heading in one direction but at this point with the most slippery of mud, the back wheels merrily flew towards the edge without control. So, our bus was positioned in such a way that the back wheels were dangerously close to the edge of the plunge. My goodness!!! If it had gone off a little bit more, we would have been statistics in Bolivia’s number of deaths from bus accidents!

The bus nearly skidded and flew off the cliff!

The mud here was one of those innocent-looking ones where you really do not know where to put your foot down at. You can put your foot down at one spot and walk normally, albeit a tad slippery. Or you can get your entire foot sucked in, the more you struggle, the further down you go. As the men worked on clearing the mud, and throwing drier pieces of rocks on the mud to create friction for the wheels, I was having my own personal struggle to walk along the edge of the cliff to get away from this atrocious mud and puddles of brown water.

One section of the raised edges (which was easier to walk on, if you know how to balance) actually had crumbled down totally. I wondered who was the one who fell through!!

The bus started its engine and just as it moved off, the back wheels skidded further to the edge, argh!!!!… even more dangerously off to the abyss before managing to turn inwards. I just did not breathe as I watched it.

However, not more than 30 metres, the bus skidded again, this time, the front of the bus nearly crashed with the side walls of the cliff. More macho men went to work.

We waited for quite a bit at an area that appeared drier before yeah, the bus came tumbling down our way and all of us got on. We journeyed on, but we continued to come across more narrow escapes. One of the most memorable ones was yet another river bashing. But this time, the river was not flat but there was a drop-off where the softer mud had been washed off. The bus assistant jumped down and started throwing rocks to the edge of the drop-off to kinda patch up the ground to make it more solid for our side wheels to go through.

Again, I did not breathe as the bus driver steered towards the river, carefully, aiming the right wheels on the solid rocks. Even clearing this section, the road up ahead had several undulating humps and you can just never be sure when the back wheels might get stuck. Oh, what a scary ride!!!

Gushing rushing rivers to cross

It took us nearly 8 hours to get to Cochabamba. Hooray, we live! I really take my hat off to the driver!

We took a colectivo to go to the bus terminal but it was stuck in the traffic near the market area for more than 1 hour. We were nearly faint with hunger as we had eaten nothing today. Renaud got off the bus to buy us some cheese snacks to tide us through. When I sort-of knew where we were, we got off and started walking.

Cochabamba had also been raining and everywhere in the market area were puddles and puddles of brown dirty water. But the people, in order to clear their own personal spaces, pushed the water away with brooms. Gosh, there was absolutely NO drainage here, or there was drainage, but all the rubbish had choked everything up! So the water was just being splashed from left to right and back!!

I bought my ticket to Santa Cruz leaving tonight. I was a little generous with myself today. I bought a fancy bus-cama seat, for US$3 more. After the harrowing ride today, I think I deserve it. I hope it is a good bus. Although I was famished, I knew that if I eat any of the oily food now, I would just throw up. So, I started my first proper food intake of today at 5pm with a bowl of fruit salad.

And after whiling the night away, I got onto the hmmm… not too bad… bus to Santa Cruz, scheduled to leave at 9:30pm but actually left at 10:10pm. They played Titantic… that’s a 3+ hour movie! I put on my ear-plugs and fell asleep soon. I hope, this time, they do not lose my backpack!

Captain Cavewoman!

Saturday, November 19th, 2005

18 November 2005 (Friday) – Torotoro, Bolivia

We discovered why the annexe was so much cheaper. There was only water for certain hours of the day. Well, this is a small town, so water was not always available. But we could easily go to the main hostel for our morning washup.

We left with Antonio at around 7:30am. He said it was a 8km hike to the Caverna Humajalanta. We were walking through more strata of eroded rocks. Some of the massive rock slabs eroded in such a way that they looked like huge rectangular floor tiles, some almost too neat-looking. Gosh, the colours, the colours, the colours! We were crossing yellow, green, purple, red, orange rocks. We stopped occasionally to study more T-rex tracks. Sometimes, we had to climb down to the bottom of a rocky valley to get across the various hills. At another interesting spot, we saw huge boulders of volcanic basalt rocks that looked like they had just been spewed out of a volcano. The view was thoroughly thoroughly breathtaking!!

Hiking to Caverna Humajalanta

This T-rex's foot might just be able to fit into my boot

The rock strata is shaped like a condor

The colours the colours the colours!!

It took us about 2 hours to reach Caverna Humajalanta. Humajalanta is not Quechua, but another local language which I forgot. It means ‘Lost Water’. After a short rest at the entrance, we put on our helmets, left our backpacks in a dark corner and proceeded on with Antonio. Well, his friends and cousins had come along, so besides Antonio, Renaud and Naoki, there were 3 other teenage boys. 6 guys and 1 girl – me. Antonio told me I should follow right behind him at all times. No protest from me. The rest of the guys would have to take care of themselves.

Gosh, I had done some simple caving before but this was one of the most difficult and exhilirating caving I have ever done. The holes were really small and claustrophobic. Sometimes, we had to duck-walk, at other times, we literally were crawling on all fours or sliding across on our stomachs. Many of the holes were awkward or a steep drop. Antonio was very sweet to really support me and heave me up at the difficult spots. He showed me exactly which rock to hold and step on. We had to rappel down a few times as well into the darkness.

I admit, I was caving around like a GIRL. It did not help that after my lasik surgery to correct my vision, I found that I had more difficulties seeing in the dark. Things were darker than how I remembered before, and I seemed to find it difficult to tell differences in depth in the dark. So, I was never sure when I could jump safely, or where I should step gingerly. Argh, I am so not proud of myself.

But, like I said, it was a thoroughly fantastic caving experience. The other times had been chicken-feat compared to this. The caves were not really for the general public to walk right in and browse at the various creations, but for those who are able to squeeze through to experience the interior depth. Not for the hefty campesinas (strapped baby or not), I am afraid. At one point, we switched off our torches and kept quiet. We could just hear the tiny drops from the stalactites. There was even a pool of blind fish. But it was too dark for us to see any fish.

Finally, we surfaced after about 2 hours of caving. We had some sandwiches for lunch, and soon, headed back to Torotoro under the hot noon sun.

I was dead-on-arrival. I took a shower and crawled to bed to die. But Renaud and Naoki, those loquitos! (crazy men), still went on to climb another mountain right in front of the town in the late afternoon. It was really tough-going, they told me, but once they got to the top, they could see the entire breathtaking mountain range. Must have been amazing. We all agreed that we were absolutely thrilled to have made the trip here to Torotoro, a place rather difficult to go to, which is good as it thus did not allow for massive tourism.

Little girl observing us in the corner

T-Rex Was Here

Saturday, November 19th, 2005
17 November 2005 (Thursday) - Torotoro, Bolivia Amazing, despite the extremely bumpy and horrible bus-ride, I think I managed to catch some winks here and there. We arrived in Torotoro at 5+am. As the door exit was still stuck with goods, ... [Continue reading this entry]

To Torotoro, campesino style

Saturday, November 19th, 2005
16 November 2005 (Wednesday) - Cochabamba to Parque Nacional Torotoro, Bolivia Naoki and I met up and headed to the bus station of the private bus company going to Torotoro and bought our tickets. Gosh, to be honest, the area looked ... [Continue reading this entry]

In The Mood For Sushi

Wednesday, November 16th, 2005
15 November 2005 (Tuesday) - Cochabamba, Bolivia Nice to be able to sleep in this morning for I have nothing to do today, save for a candle-making course later in the afternoon. I know... candle-making course, you asked?? Am I retired or ... [Continue reading this entry]

Excuse Me, Are You A Tourist?

Tuesday, November 15th, 2005
14 November 2005 (Monday) - Cochabamba, Bolivia The minute the words 'Parque Nacional Torotoro' came out of my mouth, the Tourist Office lady shoved me some brochures and seemed to wave me away, telling me everything is in there. Only from ... [Continue reading this entry]

Cochabamba, Eternal Spring City

Monday, November 14th, 2005
13 November 2005 (Sunday) - Cochabamba, Bolivia I arrived in Cochabamba at around 6am to find my backpack NOT on the bus. Well, there was a fancier bus leaving La Paz at 10pm and then, there was my normal bus ... [Continue reading this entry]

Swirl Baby Swirl

Sunday, November 13th, 2005
12 November 2005 (Saturday) - La Paz to Cochabamba, Bolivia Alexis met me in front of the Iglesia San Francisco at Plaza San Francisco and whizzed me to Plaza Villarroel by bus. There was the institute where he works. The school organizers had set ... [Continue reading this entry]

From Harsh Sun to Pouring Rain

Saturday, November 12th, 2005
11 November 2005 (Friday) - La Paz, Bolivia I had checked out of my hostel, left my backpack in the storage and headed out for my usual breakfast of salteña and fruit juice by the market. But gosh, today's weather was ... [Continue reading this entry]

According to the Coca Leaves…

Friday, November 11th, 2005
10 November 2005 (Thursday) - La Paz, Bolivia Henry started packing his things as he may or may not leave La Paz today. He would know the answer in 2 hours' time when Emmanuelle tells him HER travel plans, heh. He ... [Continue reading this entry]