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Other entries in Sucre

"These people all look the same!"

After a final desperate scurry around the markets, we settle into our surprisingly comfortable five euro seats on the night bus to Sucre, some twelve hours hence, in theory. The bus makes several scheduled stops for the usual requirements, including a half-hour break in Oruro around midnight, where four shops are selling stale bread and inedibly salty cheese to anyone hungry enough to brave the hypertension-inducing crap. When we make a somewhat unusual stop at three in the morning at a bend in an empty country road, we presume it's the usual breakdown/flat-wheel scenario and leave our driver to se to it as we drift off to sleep. Awaking at six we find ourselves in exactly the same position, only now in the daylight we can see a kilometre-long line of buses stretching before and behind us. It seems as though a crash has caused this lengthy layover and, hoping for the safety of all involved, we drift in and out of sleep for another hour.

Now more or less wide awake, it's time to go rubber-necking and we hop off the bus and amble on down the long line of coaches, asking random people what the story is. Nobody is really sure, but you can tell the Bolivians among us have a fairly solid hunch. People are spreading out into the hills left and right to try get a better view of the blockage, and others are coming back from the scene of the obstruction, shaking heads and offering semi-ludic accounts of the goings on. Nobody's hurt and there's not been an accident, merely one of the more familiar facets of road travel in Bolivia and something we were bound to run into sooner or later - a road blockade. This consists of a large group of campesinos in traditional garb plonking themselves and an Inca flag in the middle of the road and surrounding themselves with rocks, in order to protest against something or other. The reason can vary, but the method is always the same, and never has any relation to the people whose passage they're obstructing, and therefore never has any positive effect. In this case, it's something to do with a rogue mayor, but as the protesters have no visible leader and seem loath to talk to anyone to express their greivances, we can't find out any more.

While we were snoozing, a bunch of pissed-off passengers apparently tried to get things moving by laying into the demonstrators with rocks thrown from up in the hills. They succeded only in getting beaten, bleeding back to their buses. Further information starts leaking through the channels - uninvolved Quechuans are privy to a little more information than regular mestizos or gringos - and we find out the previous mayor of the neighbouring village had been voted out of office and refused to leave, and the people's new elected leader had been unable to take up his post. All very bad form, but what exactly it had to do with anyone present or how we were supposed to help the new mayor don his sash was anyone's guess. Wandering further down the road, I took a few snaps of the surrounding countryside, but not of the group, for fear of a rock upside the head or a mass beating. There were no women present (unless heavily disguised, Life of Brian style) and all the men had on black britches, forever sandals (the footwear fashioned from recycled car tyres and worn from birth to death), pink and green waistcoats, dark-coloured mini-ponchos and two hats: one crocheted multicoloured flopy hat with ear-flaps and bobbles, and one tiny white bowler hat worn at a jaunty angle atop the first one. To relieve the boredom and increase the tension, dynamite was exploded every half-hour or so in the hills.

On reaching the village, beyond the line of vehicles backed up on the far side of the blockade, I tried in vain to find comestibles. It was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, and the two cafés in the place were under-equipped to deal with hundreds of hungry travellers. Walking back once more, I met a man with some political connections who filled me in on the missing details of the odd story. Apparently, the old mayor had finally consented to leave office. He had also left town, taking with him every penny the village possessed and gone into hiding in Potosi, or possibly La Paz. It's a pretty brutal situation for the people of the pueblo as the police have absolutely no interest in their situation, the press politely ignores their plight and appeals to the goverment have fallen on deaf, corrupt ears. This kind of thing was all supposed to change with the election of Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigeno president, but unsurprisingly he has yet to show any overt concern for his people. So they take to the road, sit down and wait, and wait for something, anything to happen. We do likewise and from time to time there is some communication, but the leaderless troop have only shrugs and turned heads to offer for the most part, as it's clear they have no idea what direction their protest is supposed to take. Soon, from the mountain appears a line of black dots heading downwards, flags a-waving, and withing twenty minutes the numbers have doubled. There seems to be some kind of leadership amongst the new arrivals, and what's more the media seem to finally have taken at least a perfunctory interest in proceedings, as a radio report leaking from a nearby 4x4 confirms.

After some pleading on behalf of the hungry, crying babies, the sick and people with urgent appointments, a talk-circle is formed. One by one, people step into the middle and air their greivances. Everyone sympathises with everyone else, but nobody seems willing to compromise on anything, and so the meeting is a somewhat futile exercise. We go once more unto the village, leaving them all to squabble and shrug. On the way, we meet a couple of Australian brothers hoping to get to La Paz by nightfall, who invite us back to their truck for a coffee after we've dined. One of the diners is now out of lunch and the other draining the dregs of the cooking pot. The meal is a traditional Bolivian soup, hot water and leaves with a raw spud floating under the surface and a main course of barely cooked rice, more hard potatoes and a leg of raw chicken.When they refuse to change or cook the offending appendage, we refuse to pay, and a new dispute flares up. We eventually hand over twenty pee for the soup, and we part on unfriendly terms. We look out for the Aussies' truck and, true to their word, it is unmissable. A gargantuan black-and-white safari bus, equipped with seating for thirty-five and sleeping for three, idles on the roadside, and as the third occupant, the guys' sister boils a kettle in the van's kitchenette, her middle bro plonks a bottle of champers in the nearby stream, to cool for dessert. News has emerged from the front that the protest will be temporarily disrupted at midday to let some traffic through, news we take with a pinch of salt. On hearing of our botched lunch adventure, they immediately bring out a saucepan of tuna and tomato pasta and heat it up for us. We're beginning to warm to our new mates, whose job involves driving groups of tourists around South America and Africa on fifteen-week tours, with optional jump-on and hop-offs along the way, and as the bubbly chills we crack open a bottle of flavoursome red, recently imported from across the Argentinian border. A white soon follows, as the midday deadline comes and goes with no change in matters. By one o'clock, there's a bottle of whiskey being passed around, gladly shared by a couple of Bolivian passers-by. We're tipsily sunning ourselves at two, placing bets on when we might expect to get moving, taking photos to mark the occasion and generally making the most of what's really only a minor inconvenience for us, and a major upheaval for the protestors, for whom we now have a little more compassion and support in our mellowed state. Suddenly, around two-thirty, some engines rev, shouts come from up the road and there's a generally mad scurry as things finally appear to be improving. The blockade has been lifted for a half-hour and the buses are bursting through the lines in both directions. We hastily gather up stools, bottles and bags and have time to exchange hugs and e-mail addresses before we scarper back up the track, hoping our bus will stop for us. It does, and we scramble aboard the moving vehicle to cheers from the occupants who were worried we might get left behind. When they recognised the missing gringos, they shouted at the driver to stop and helped us aboard with back-pats and whistles. As we caught our breath, we noticed that the seats of the bus had changed from blue to grey and the occupants were not those from earlier. Sure enough, it was the wrong bus, the wrong destination and the wrong gringos. A few panicky minutes later and we were seated, breathless in our correct seats on the right bus, on the way to Sucre. Arriving at seven pm, twelve hours later than expected, we joined forces with Johannes, a German guy who had just finished his four-month contract in La Paz and was just now getting to visit this beautiful, crazy country. At the third time of asking, we settled on a quiet, affordable lodging house in the city centre and finally remade acquaintance with bed-linen and running water.

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