Saturday, May 20, 2006
Bits & Pieces in Boliva
Stuff and nonsense
I think I´m the first person to officially note that dogs make more noise at night over 3000ms above sea level. Other things that are odd at altitude: tea tastes terrible and my tinnitus is far more noticable. Something I didn´t know before, but Cactae grow in the middle of forests - or at least in the bit of jungley forest between Tarija and Yaquiba in Bolivia they do, and they´re HUGE! I thought they were desert loving plants but apparently not... and in Camiri the parrots are on the large side
Tarija smells wonderful at night. I think it´s the mix of Eucalyptus and Orange trees. On our last night Norwegian Chris got excited that there was a band that day (17th May - Norway´s Constitution day) , and although it was for something completely different we waved some homemade Norwegian flags all the same. (There have still only been two days while I´ve been in Bolivia that I haven´t seen a band, of some sort). This band included a section of very strange trumpet-like instruments, about 2 ms long with a leather horn at the end... they were unweildy and sounded pretty dreadful, so I´m not surprised they haven´t caught on elsewhere. After I realised I had hidden from view the bicycle that the drum major subsequently fell over, I felt it was time to leave town.
It took at 12 hour bumpy ride from Tarija to Yaquiba, including stops and road blocks, but we made it. We travelled by day (which seems to be an unusual event for Bolivian "long distance" buses). I´d been longing for a bit of lush greenery ever since I´d left Paraguay, and I got it... as we moved east the cloud came in and the hillsides turned from arid scrub to ridge after ridge of thick forest , with only the road and the pockets of cultivated land near the few villages along it making any break in the canopy.
Yaquiba is another border town and is the first place in Bolivia (having arrived after dark) where I have felt even vaguely ill at ease, so we jumped in a micro* (a converted right hand drive Toyota estate) packed with the driver, 3 other people, and a boot full of giant bags of puffed wheat and rice (coloured pink) and headed to Villamontes, (a town we couldn´t get directly from Tarija to because of a landslide). Along the highway (no, honest, it´s paved) we reached one particularly wide river, instead of there being a road bridge, the highway ended at the railway track and all the traffic just went along the railway lines, single file, and then the highway started again when we got to the other side. I love this country!
From Villamontes another micro to Camiri, a town surrounded by the forest and Bolivia's petroleum industry - which makes is sound awful, but it's a good stopover if only to have a go on the giant bird telephones... although they only go through to the emergency number at the moment, but don't bother ringing there a military base on the other side of the road, so I´m sure they'll help out if you need it.
Tomorrow on to Santa Cruz.
* A micro in Bolivia is a tini minivan or car, in Chile it is a local bus, which in Argentina is called a colectivo, but in Chile a colectivo is a taxi with a fixed route, which is sometimes called a remise in Argentina although that can sometimes just be a taxi or a mini cab...confused? I was.
