Accidental Adventures

There are times while traveling when it just seems like the worst idea in the world, to be alone in a foreign country, literally thousands of miles away from anyone who even knows your name.  Jenni left on Wednesday morning, and my month on my own began with my realizing I had lost my debit card.  It wasn't stolen, as there haven't been any weird charges.  I just left it somewhere.  I know that makes me an idiot. 

Thus began an adventure that involved several calls to Bank of America on the shoddiest international connection ever, in a little internet cafe where the sympathetic owner complimented my Spanish and gave me a piece of candy with my change, possibly because I looked like I was going to cry.  It was easy enough to freeze my debit account.  Figuring out how on earth I would get money was more complicated.  It takes a week an a half to send a new bank card abroad; I don't even know, at this point, where I'll be the day after tomorrow. The B of A representative told me I shouldn't have a problem getting a cash advance on my credit card, but banks 1-4 that I visited didn't agree so much.  They all sent me to the main bank branch, on Camacho, "in that direction."  Since there are at least two Calle Camachos, and "in that direction" was a polite-ish way of saying "stop bothering me," it took me forever to find the right bank.  When I finally got there, the teller almost sent me away because the signature on my passport didn't look enough like the signature on one of the many receipts she made me sign.  I tried to explain that one's signature changes quite a bit between the ages of sixteen - my passport is from 2003 - and twenty-four.  (In fact, although I didn't tell her this, my current signature comes from hours of doodling in high school math classes, trying to develop a signature that looked more "grown-up" - if only I had anticipated the consequences!)  Either she bought the explaination or wanted me to stop crying (again - not a big crier, but these were dire circumstances), because two tellers and another hour later and I finally had my cash.

That ordeal (temporarily) over, I set out for the town of Coroico, about three hours outside of La Paz on the outskirts of the jungle.  I hadn't stayed in the same place for more than a single night since April 1, and I wanted some time to relax.  I got into a cab and told the driver to take me to "the Villa Fatima bus station," as my Lonely Planet indicated all buses to the yungas (the jungle region of Bolivia) leave from the neighborhood of Villa Fatima.  He clearly had no idea what I was taking about.  I thought he was an idiot.  Turns out, once again, it was me.

The buses to the yungas do leave from the working-class neighborhood of Villa Fatima, but there is no bus station.  Instead, different street corners are dedicated to different destinations, so you have to figure out where your particular bus leaves from.  The kindly cab driver, in between astounding questions about what the United States was like - "What language do they speak there?" "Do people from the U.S. eat corn?" - asked around and got me safely to the right place.

Finally there, I walked up to one of the companies and asked for a ticket to Coroico.

"Fifteen bolivianos," the attendant said.  Note that that's right around two dollars.

"Great, thanks," I said.  "And what time does the bus leave?"

She gave me a withering look.  "Sometime after it gets here."

A sort of crap picture of a cholita
stolen from someone else's blog. 
It's considered rude (obviously, I guess)
to take pictures of them, so I don't have
my own.  Note the precarious hat
and many-layered skirts.

Awesome.  I waited for about 45 minutes in the uncharacteristically hot afternoon, among the street vendors selling fruit and cigarettes and soda and the cholitas - indigenous women who still wear their traditional garb - waiting to go back to the countryside with bags full of bread and yogurt and potatoes bought from markets in La Paz.  The bus finally came at around 2:30 (which, when I finally looked at my ticket, was exactly when it said it was going to come) and the cholitas piled their purchases on the roof with a strength that puts my skinny pale arms to absolute shame. Fifteen of us piled into a van little bigger than a Ford Windstar, and after a quick round of complaining about how hot it was, which an Afro-Bolivian man solved by prying a window open with his keys, we were on our way.

The bus ride was its own little adventure.  I was the only gringa on the bus, and was treated in much the way someone would treat a fart - everyone noticed me, pretty obviously, but they all pretended not to.  That was okay, as it gave me the opportunity to watch them, chatting, swapping coca leaves and clusters if grapes and homemade sandwiches, and to look out the window.  The World's Most Dangerous Road used to be the only way to get from La Paz to Coroico, and while a new highway opened up to replace it in 2007, there's still a little bit of overlap, and it's still a treacherous an winding road set high up on the cliffs.  I counted 38 roadside crosses before we even hit the new road, which is not, frankly, a road game I would recommend.  But after a while I began to trust the driver, who obviously knew the road well and was neither drunk nor falling asleep (both big causes of bus accidents in Bolivia). 

We got into Coroico a little before 6 pm, and I spent the next couple of days in a little cabin in a gorgeous resort in the jungle, alternately wandering, writing, and hanging out with a group of Americans I ran into there who had been on my WMDR ride. It was just what I needed after so many accidental adventures.