Laura: We got up early, bought some street food consisting of fried potatoes (very good) and got on our first Bolivian bus to Potosi. We had heard some bad things about the buses but since we have slummed it in Africa and India, they were pretty ok to us! Our standards have slipped below what normal people would consider acceptable. Five hours later we arrived in Potosi, the highest city in the world. We soon discovered that there were no more buses to Sucre that day so I headed off to negotiate a price for a micro van while Ahmad waited for the bags. I spoke to a few people and gathered that it was £4 each for a 150km journey so I headed back, grabbed Ahmad and returned to the parking lot.This was when things got interesting!
As soon as people saw us with our backpacks they started fighting over us! They also started quoting prices a lot higher than I had initially been told. We were walking back and forth between cars and then people started screaming prices at us! Eventually we got sorted and were on our way. There was a Bolivian lady sat on the back seat with us who was very friendly but since we couldn’t speak Spanish and she couldn’t speak English we mainly just smiled at each other. She did however elbow me during the entire journey. About half way we came to a landslide and two buses were stuck there so we were pretty glad we were in a car.
We arrived in Sucre about 7pm and it was dark and rainy. We headed to a hotel that had been recommended but it was full so we had to stay one night in a grubby place with sunken beds (joy). Ahmad had a skype meeting with a recruiter the following day so we went straight out to find a quick internet connection which is almost impossible in Bolivia. We were both feeling pretty cranky and Ahmad was quite frustrated that we were in Bolivia when he needed to do telephone interviews but we soon cheered up when we found ultra quick internet near the plaza. We went to celebrate by having steak at a restaurant opposite our hotel for a whopping £3 for a massive piece of beef!
The following day we moved to the Quechua Inn. Quechua is the indigenous language and for those of you who don’t know, this is the language Jabba The Hut speaks in Star wars! We had some breakfast, wandered around the town and relaxed for a bit. An irish couple we met on the SF tour had also checked into our guesthouse so we went out for dinner together at the central market that night. This is where all the cheap eats can be found. On the first night we all had something called a lomito: beef, sausage, chips, rice, salad and fried egg all piled on the same plate. It was £1.20!!! The food is quite bland and stodgy in Bolivia but we need to save some cash so we don’t really have the option of going to better places. The second night we had a chuleta: a big piece of steak with rice and chips (do you see a theme forming?) which was a whopping £1.30. Afterwards we bought some wine, went back to the hostel and stayed up chatting with Aoife and Paul who were really nice and a good laugh.
The next day everything was closed because on 1/11 people honour their dead and do so by hanging a black ribbon above their door and letting ANYBODY come in to eat and drink! Apparently the eating is not compulsory but drinking certainly is, makes sense! We couldn’t really do much other than get bus tickets and take some pictures of the town. If one of us spoke decent Spanish we would have gone to people’s houses but since we don’t it would have felt awkward. We did manage to find another place to eat for £1 though and we were pretty happy to see beef curry as an option (the bland food gets a bit much).
On our last full day we headed out for breakfast and randomly bumped into a group of people we met in Salta! They showed us their hostel (which was amazing) and two other guys from Salta were also there! We all walked to the cemetery which was really pretty and headed to a bar to escape the rain. We decided to treat ourselves to a cocktail which led to three more and before I knew it, I was pretty drunk. Later that night when we got back to the hostel and Ahmad realised he didn’t have his phone anymore so we walked halfway back to the bar, at which point he remembered he had it when we left so we assumed we had been pick pocketed! We were pretty pissed off about it as we have managed to avoid this for 10 months only for my idiot boyfriend to find the phone underneath his pillow! I don’t know how he could have forgot that….argh!
The following morning we caught a night bus to La Paz.