February 6, 2009

The trip to Potosi by local bus was awful. Usually you can pay extra and get a bus with a bathroom and slightly more leg room. This wasn´t an option here but we were fortunate to be able to book seats. Once you are in your seat, the bus is packed with as many other locals as can fit in the aisle. The locals usually travel with babies, small children and enormous packs and so it can feel claustrophobic with a backpack in your face and someone almost sitting on your lap. I did manage to do sneak a sketch of one old man standing in the aisle. After a few minutes, I realised that all the other aisle folk were watching me watching him!

The trip was six hours on remote bumpy gravel mountain roads (95% of roads in Bolivia are unpaved). After three hours we had a fifteen minute stop-- no bathrooms at all. The men just lined up on the mountain edge and I walked back down the road and tried to find a little privacy behind a potato plant.

All of this would have been okay (I do love adventures) except I felt very nausiated for the entire trip, even with the gravol. After we reached our hostel I was very sick all night. I am just now thinking of rejoining the land of the living. Before we came on this trip, Jim and I both tried Dukerol, a $ 160 option to stop vomitting and diarreaha for three months. We can both attest that it doesn´t work!