Four of Bolivia's largest western cities, five breathtaking days, and the tale of how one young man learns that nothing good comes without pain. WOAH! that sounds like an epic story. Like the adventure of a lifetime! Like it belongs in a file cabinet in Hollywood labeled "coming of age heartbeakers!" it sounds like the beginning of a mediocre bolg entry with more than a little forced drama.


But it's all true, and if you don't believe me I DARE YOU to read on.



Day 1: At about 3 PM a few dozen college tourisim students, administrators, and teachers board minibuses headed for La Paz. It's a hot day, summer is coming to the valley and when it isn't raining the sun shines like it has ground to make up.


Everyone is loaded down. Most of the crowd aren't expirienced travelers and sit under bulging backpacks with sleeping bags tied to them. The back of the bus is an ocean of baggage with 14 humans treading water. Faces and sometimes shoulders poke up for air but bodies are lost all together.


When they arrive in La Paz it is dark, and the temperature had dropped drastically. Sweaty t-shirts have been covered with winter jackets and llama fur scarves. They wait patiently in the covered bus station eating fried chicken and cold french fries. Tickets are bought and seats are planned on the Flota to Cochabamba. A flota is a two-story coachbus fitted with sealed windows and the ability warp the laws of physics and slow time beyond comprehension. The byproducts of the process are heat, humidity, and odorous clouds - vented directly into the passengers cabin.


They wait a few hours talking and watching muted TVs, their shoulders ache from hunching and their collars moisten from being breathed into. The temperature is around 40º but might aswell be -40º because as it turns these normally sturdy people are only comfortable at exactly 78º anything below that is HACE FRIO.







DAY: 2 At 6:00 AM the next day they climb off the bus to the welcome freshness of early morning. Cochabamba is home to the worlds largest image of christ (40.44 meters tall). Which they visit, after the fortunate discovery of coffee, and climb up from the inside. The Cristo stands on a hill in the center of the city of 1.5 million. From his chest they can see it all opened below them. Cars and people are lost in a wash of adobe colored blocks spattered with glass office buildings.


This city is the home of Chicharone, the fattier parts of a pig fried in oil and served with major league sized (no smaller than human knuckles) corn kernals and potatoes.











They eat sinful quantities. They get as much nutrition as they would from packing peanuts, they REALLY like it.





They spend the rest of the day sleepily enjoying other tourist attractions like an aquarium and BMX biking track. By 10:00 PM they are aboard another Flota heading toward the countries judicial Capital Sucre.

Day 3: At sunrise they awake to their bus stuck in TRAFFIC, a line of Flotas and trucks with a few cars mixed in. BUT WAIT, there is no traffic in Bolivia, most people don't have cars, most don't travel, outside of downtown areas cars just don't spend much time together. They have come to a substantial obstacle on their journey, and one that isn't terribly uncommon DESRUMBE.

There was a road here and it didn't run gently uphill.

The dirt in the western part of the country is sort of rocky, and actually isn't that dirty. It's sort of like XXL gravel mixed with sand. When it rains here the steep hillsides become "geologically unstable" and have the vexatious habit of sliding into lower ground.

Typical of Bolivia the hundreds of trapped travellers are now responsible for getting things cleaned up, at least to the point of usability. But don't fear - they had tools, two pic-axes and a shovel. They didn't clear everything, but over a couple hours and through trial and error (I'll leave the errors to your imagination) they were able to make a path to drive the mostly enormous vehicles over.

They arrive in Sucre in the early afternoon, and head directly to in incredible archaeological site disguised as a theme park PARQUE CREATICO. Greeted by giant colorful dinosaur heads mounted on a stonewall flanking ticket booths, the travellers argue prices for what seems like an excessive amount of time and eventually enter. It's a full 45 min following a tour guide through models of eggs, speakers approximating calls, and life sized statues before the group comes to what looks at first to be the meticulously cut wall of a quarry. The park's closest neighbor is a cement factory, and for years they dug here for their raw materials until someone realized that they were actually uncovering the worlds largest collection of preserved dinosaur tracks. Pressed into what is now nearly a vertical surface there are dozens of complete lines ranging in size from four legged, long necked giants to two legged running things that don't look much different than seriously overgrown leathery chickens.

Next on the agenda was a trip to the city's cemetery. The disparity in housing quality for the dead was about as serious as the disparity in housing that exists for the living here. The rich rest in family tombs built with fine stone stained and glass, like temples of of self worship. The poor are placed in veritable tenements. Single occupancy slots line the four walls of concrete buildings built in tight expansive clusters. Tenements in a beautiful surrounding, but crowded nonetheless.

Day 4: The house was bigger than they expected but let's be serious, it was sort of dubious to think that the whole group could sleep comfortably like that. There is a bed in the boys room, there are also busted up cardboard boxes and some blankets. There were like 12 of them and the fact that no one suffocated is probably eough to be thankful for this holiday season. At an altitude of 13,420 ft Potosí claims to be the highest city on Earth, closing the windows to recycle the air just wasen't that good of an idea.

The city is built at the foot of a mountain named Cerro Rico (rich mountain) that once held enormous amounts of silver. Today after taking 45,000 tons of the precious metal they have to call it Cerro Pobre (poor mountain). Mining is still the most common job here, despite how terribly demanding it is, and how low the pay is. Wikipedia claims 8,000,000 million have died in the mine since it was opened in the 1500's. The workers still make less than 10 Dollars a day.

The group climbs the mountain in a bus. They meet gritty miners their own age. They see real dynamite and smoke powerful hand rolled cigarettes. A few hours later they descend the mountain in a bus, past the miner's houses, past trucks hauling busted up rocks and down toward the plaza. In Latin America the rich live in city centers down low, and the higher you climb above the cities in the outskirts the poorer the people are. Here the miners live the highest where its coldest at night and where they never get out of the sight of the mine entrances that functions like second homes and just maybe as graves as well.

Day 5: at 5 AM the bus pulls into the La Paz bus terminal. Everyone makes their own way home less happy about the trip than they will be in 5 years.

So there it is, despite all the sarcasm it was fun. It was essential for the students, many of whom hadn't been more than a few hundred km from their homes in their lives and will soon work in tourism. For Sam and I it was gruelling but I really connected with some kids on a new level. We ate some new foods, saw beautiful things, and met interesting people. There is just one loose end- the moral, the part where I learn that nothing good comes without pain. Well, let me put it subtly. We ate street vendor food for five days, the bacteria was new, and the bathrooms were rare and crowded. Sitting there in the dark bus crawling across the open countryside one thought more than any other stayed in my head. The Hoover Dam cracking open in slow motion and letting millions of gallons of muddy water flood a picturesque countryside.