"Our bus just nearly drove off the edge of a cliff", Julie told me with an unusually mundane, cool, careless air, her speech a little slurred and her tone devoid of any panic that such an observation should evoke. She very slowly raised her arm and gradually extended her index finger, taking some seconds to do so, moving with the speed of an astronaught in space to point out the window and highlight the area of danger to me. By the time she managed to successfuly point, we were far away from the scene in question. Feeling like every obstacle known to man and nature was against me, I eventually managed to turn my head towards her and with my speech equally as slurred as hers said, "Who cares?", which was shortly followed by "I´m fucked. Am I slurring my words?" I also think I may have called her ´Judy´. The Diazepam we had taken an hour earlier had most definately kicked in.
Ordinarily, I refrain from taking narcotics (of the prescribed kind), however Julie/Judy and I had been travelling non-stop for a full 36 hours without sleeping and were facing another 16 hour bus journey on a night bus designed by the devil for Bolivian midgits. Us, being tall especially by Bolivian standards (i.e. over 4 foot) knew that our knees would be getting intimate with our chins throughout the entire journey making it impossible to sleep. Diazepam, Valium, a sledgehammer to the head, whatever we could get our hands on to knock us out was a necessity.
Julie and I were the only non Bolivians on the bus, however I like to think were we not so pale skinned, tall, blonde, clean and if we´d have been wearing traditional Bolivian clothes that we would have fitted right in. Inside the bus was crazy, jam packed but luckily we had seats, every inch was taken by locals, bags and animals. One woman got onboard with a cat. The local men are known to piss in bottles when on long bus journeys, I´d like to see a cat do that. A man got on the bus, stood beside me and sang a Bolivian song in an unusually high pitched voice for a good 15 minutes. I gave him a big thumbs up when I caught his eye ("eyes" really, he had two).
These people were on our bus. Julie and I ALMOST blended in.
I overcame the noise and smells onboard and even my concern that this was a 16 hour bus journey with no toilet in order to enjoy the scenery. We travelled through an amazing desert backdrop, massive cactai were scattered on either side of us and the setting sun exaggerated the picturesque outline of the mountains against the pinkest sky I have ever seen. We drove under giant red hollowed out rocks as high as buildings, the sides of the bus almost getting scraped as we passed through these narrow passageways. Then, the forked lightning started and the driver decided to leave the semi decent dirt road we were on in favor of the path less travelled, over shrubs and rocks we bounced watching the only chance of a road we had fade into oblivion behind us. The drivers here often tend to off road the busses, I reckon it´s to avoid rainy season landslides or it´s that they are so off their faces on local whiskey that they doen´t know what they´re doing. I think it was at this point that Julie and I popped our happy pills, sat back and enjoyed the ride!
The bus broke down a couple of times in the middle of the night and one of these times I managed to lift my heavy lead Diazepam legs and get out for a stretch, with the encouragement of Julie "You can do it". The huge effort it took was worth it, if only to find out that there was a local man asleep in the luggage compartment underneath the bus, I saw a lady pass him some food, he was dusty but happy.
Me, all drugged up and the broken down bus. Dark photo....I know, but it was night time!
After a long, long journey, we finally arrived in Sucre, Bolivia where we have been for the past two weeks. It´s a relatively pretty, big enough city with most mod cons, so a good place to chill out. Unusually, the locals are all armed with water balloons and giant super soakers so I can´t leave the hostel without being pelted and drenched by them. I´ve been hit a good 20 times already, so am thinking of investing in some balloons myself and getting my own back. ha ha.
It was Julie´s birthday last week, a gang of us gringos hit the town. We ended up in a heaving Latino nightclub full of locals gyrating against eachother and practically having sex on the dancefloor. It was like a scene from ´Dirty Dancing´ only the part of Patrick Swazye was being played by a 4 foot Bolivian man with a size 2 waist and a mushroom haircut.
Bolivian men are uber keen to dance with us gringas even though we are horrible dancers compared to them. The boy child that chose me for his partner was quite literally up to my chest and no more than 16 years old. His eyes met my breasts and we swayed rhythmically together for a moment before he twirled me around and shook his little boy hips skillfully from side to side. Me, being a bad dancer at the best of times gave him my best rigor mortis moves, my body feeling like it was 80 percent cement. He, bendy as rubber made the best of it. This exhibit of me, a giant in comparison dancing with this small but pleasant Bolivian boy child was quite the spectacle. Julie, unknown to me took a video of us dancing but it didn´t come out, ha ha ha, Julie!! Later, my boy child asked Julie to ask me if I would like to go for a drive and some ice - cream with him the following day. I told Julie to tell him, no thank you, surprised that he was old enough to drive, but perhaps I was meant to drive? I may forever wonder what might have been, we may have gone on to marry and have had a beautiful boy child Bolivian baby one day whom with the mix of mine and his fathers genes may have grown up to be as tall as 4 foot 2.
My Bolivian boy child on the left hand side. Bolivians never smile in photos. Weirdos.
I have a real knack, a gift almost for attracting gobshites. I think part of the reason is that whilst most people will turn away from them or tell them to get lost, I actively encourage them and am more then happy to spend my evenings conversing with the mentally deranged and unusual. Perhaps they say the same about me! The night I met the Bolivian boy child dancer I spent the guts of an hour having a conversation with a local guy who had what I can only describe as a more passionate than logical interest in Irish cream. He even whipped some imaginary cream for me in the night club and showed me that he had the defination of the word "cream" in his phone. I congratulated him on both accounts.
Irish Cream guy. I was pissing myself at the ridiculousness of it.
We found a Bolivian Karaoke bar the other night, a real piss hole of a place where Bolivians go to get off their faces, whail and scream ear abusing noise in Spanish into a microphone. The locals, being such goddam awful singers would inspire confidence in even the most timid (little old me) of preformers. So, of course I got up and sang about ten songs with that singing voice of mine, which has only been used twice since 1987 when I made my holy communion and was forced to sing or I would "burn in hell". I mimed in choir class at school for five whole years, hours wasted as I just stood there amongst other girls who were actually singing as I lip synched. Naomi did the same with the recorder, she pretended to blow into it and moved her fingers over it for three years with no sound ever coming out. Her and I should have formed a girl band.
That night at the Karaoke bar, a Bolivian guy with no English came over to me and asked me to take a drink from his glass. "No thank you" I said logically. With that he put the glass down, put his hands together and pleaded with me to take just "un poco" (a little) drink from it. "No thank you" (again). "Por favor, por favor, por favor!!" he asked again, his eyes watering. "Is there Rhynopol in it?" I asked in English. "Yes! Yes!", he told me, a big smile on his face. "I´ll pass, thank you." Yet another kind offer from a Bolivian man I´ve turned down, oh regrets!!!
In other news, last week I got food poisoning and then, with my immune system weakened my old friend, a certain Protestant in a top hat and tails decided to pay me another visit (see my blog entry entitled "Hanging with my parasite in Bolivia" for this to make perfect sense). Now, I´m all about the self inflicted illnesses, hangovers, alcohol poisoning and so on, these are fine as the chances are that you had some fun before the illness struck. But mine, I got mine from lettuce, a "health inflicted illness" almost, the wussiest kind, oh the shame!
But see....lettuce can be scary!
I have a birthday coming up, so the next time I make a blog entry I will be 25 years old, give or take 5 years. I´ve been trying to think of something I´d like to achieve in my 30th year on this planet (Mars) and welcome your comments and suggestions on things I could and should do. So, feel free to make suggestions on this page and bear in mind that I´ve already said no to taking Rhynopol and going for ice-cream with a Bolivian child.
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