Sanitation and hygiene

In the Villazon bus station, a stones throw over the Bolivian border, I realise that I forgot to have my final Argentinean steak last night. I opted instead for a mediocre pizza. Bad call. I hate to admit it, being a carnivorous meatatarian, but to be honest I was getting a bit bored of giant, tender, cheap, juicy steak. Though had I realised it was my last Argey meal it'd've been nice to put a fat Bife de Chorizo con papas fritas away, accompanied by a fat woody Malbec.

So! The international stamp collector hath collected another stamp! Bolivia, tick. First impression is that it's damn cheap here. The national currency, the Boliviano, is abbreviated internationally to BOB - old school! The prices themselves are about the same figures as Argentina, though where it used to be 6 pesos to the pound, it's 16 Bob. Cheap cheap cheap!

However, the cheapness is a consequence of poorness and in a rundabout way with poorness cometh illness. The Lonely Planet pretty much said that for all it's strong cards, sanitation and hygiene are the weak suits. Pretty much for the first time in South America I begin eyeing food stuffs with suspicion. In spam my Navimag pal Sal said she got ill straight off the bat in Bolivia. I emailed her and asked what to avoid. 'Everything', came the reply. Great. A tube of Pringles, por favor.

2nd impression - there are loads of ace indigenous looking chicas in vibrant traditional dress. Apparently over half the population claim 'Amerindian' blood. If we're gonna splice words I prefer the word 'Indigian'. But near all the women here wear these ace mini bowler hats, seemingly glued on their noggins at a jaunty angle. They genuinely wear ponchos, all have black plaited hair and use versatile garish woven sheets as handbags, backpacks, shawls and baby carriers. Plus they have amazing faces, weathered, leathery and wizened. Like a granny, but at 40.

And they straight won't let you photograph them! If you ask it's a no. If you hide in a bush half a mile away with mr telephoto on the long end, they have this extra sensory perception, spot you and turn away. It's uncanny... and, as a photographer, rather annoying. I was determined to find out why and asked a Boliviano (not the coin) if it was some ancient superstition about having your soul stolen. Nope. Over my time in B I concluded, at a guess, that it was cos they didn't like a) feeling like they were Zoo exhibits and b) finding their likeness on a postcard and not seeing a cent from it.

So, back in Villazon with an rabble of backpackers from the Argey bus I sorted a ticket to Sucre. I'd been on a bus since 10am and it was now 5pm, so what's another 14 hours? And for two pound sixty eight how can one complain? I stock up on supplies for the bus. Mutated wotsit copies ('Cheesits'!) close to their eat-by date, a red fanta, some seemingly normal lemony biscuits and warm agua sin gas.

I look around for something to eat now, and never have I seen such an ugly cross-selection of national cuisine. Perhaps the bus station is a bad place from which to judge, but it seems the national dish is either a bowl of vomit or chicken and chips. There's a C&C hawker stall every 100m keeping soggy looking chips lukewarm under a 40w bulb. I'd rather get the shits from food that looked and ideally tasted nice. Overtly suspect of the chicken, I grab a tray of almost cold chips, cake em in mayo and tommy K that have more than likely sat in't sol all day, say a little grace (slash exorcism) for strong guts and get noshing. I didn't spend that time eating any old crap in Bangladesh for nothing. Do your worst.

Not long later, in the loo (fortunately not as a consequence of the chups) I quickly learnt the Bolivian Bog Rule: don't put anything down the pan/hole that didn't come from inside you, unless you want to see it again. Like the Argeys and Chileans, you get a bin where you're to dispose of used bog roll, sunny side down if you've any manners. It is 'inshiteful' to see how more peeps scrunch than fold. But it also seems Bolivians don't furnish their loos with bog roll (...note to self). Could be less than amusing being caught short on sick day.

The fellow travellers turn out to be on the same bus as me, but alighting earlier. We loiter round the lyrically, and more than optimistically named, 'Semi Carma Villa Imperial Flota Bus' awaiting destructions. It's a 3rd world bus make no mistake. You can tell by how they rip out the official number of seats, squeeze em together and bolt in another ten rows. When they finally let us all on, well after departure time, I find a burley Bolivian in my seat. We both have the same number on our tickets. The 16 year old who seems to think he runs the show tries to explain I should sit on a blanket by the driver. Hmmm.

I wait for everyone to board and sit in a space next to a kindly looking man, who turns out to be an Argentinian on business. We have a passable conversation in Spanish about my three month jaunt round South America. He informs me that to get all the way to Sucre I'm probably gonna have to change buses in Potosí, at approximately shit o'clock tomorrow morning. Yey.

The bus is so shit it's brilliant! You know you're traveling when you're on a super shit bus. The old heap finally sets off and minutes after leaving town the paved road becomes a dusty rubble, through drive keeps the pedal to the metal irrespective. It stinks of cigs, dusty bedsheats and the great unwashed. I'm sneezing from the dust and much to my surprise, considering the dwarfine leg room, I bounce off to sleep.

I wake as the lights flick on for a bog stop and find I'm the only westerner left. T'others have gone, so I decide to shake out the legs, take a leak and see if my pack's where I left it under the bus. Stretch tick, piss grim, bag gone. Hmm. I ponder that it might have been taken off by the 16 year old and put in a pile with the other backpackers bags and we screamed off while I slept. But there's nothing I can do now, so I get back on and drift in an out of consciousness to Potosí.

In Potosí Bus depot at 4am, next to a urinating man, I find my pack in a new home under the bus. I shuffle it over to my connecting bus, don the fleece cos it's got super chilly and settle in between a chair and a fat man. Soon after I get some exciting cramp which makes me spasm and crack my funnybone on some protruding metal by the window. Whenever the bus is in a stationary position it's considered fair game to soda sellers, empenada pimps and ladies selling what appears to be tied clear bag of seamen and urine. "SODA FRIO SODA SODA SODA!!" is the mantra. But as soon as we start to move, there's a quick scrabble and their gone.

Before long I'm shivering my ass off and able to see my breath as we drive through cloud on a high Andean pass. Fortunately the sun soon comes up and warms the single-glazed tin box, and before I know it we're arriving in Sucre, my first proper Bolivian town.

Metaphorically, they say Bolivia is a beggar sleeping in a golden bed. A country brimming to overflowing with natural resources, but too poor and corrupt to exploit itself. It suffers a 'Third World Trifecta' i) a high infant mortality (5.7% of all births) ii) a high birth rate (3.3 sprogs per mam) and iii) low female literacy (77%). Generally, to me it sounds really interesting, and as in all 3rd world countries, it wears it's culture on it's colourful sleeve.

Bring it on.


Barnaby