The Muddy-Pants Diaries

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 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!!!

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!

Tags: 09) Bolivian Rhapsody, Cochabamba, Torotoro

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