In Bolivia, por fin!

Well, folks, I've made it to Bolivia. Nine days after leaving Manizales, after 60 hours spent on seven different buses and two airplanes which crossed through four different countries, I am finally in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the city in which my little sister has been studying for the past three months. It is a most welcome pleasure to be able to just spend time in one place for a little while after so many days in motion. It's also great to see Emily, since it's been more than four months!

This entry would be about nine hundred pages long if I were to recount all of what happened in these past days, which is interesting, since most of the bus days have the same format:

- Arrive at bus station fifteen minutes before scheduled departure, as per the recommendation of the friendly bus company employees. You are, of course, the first to arrive, including the bus driver and/or the bus, save maybe one or two other whities with giant backpacks and Velcro sandals.
-All other passengers arrive one to two minutes before scheduled departure time, as does the bus you'll be taking. Bus leaves about 15 minutes late.
-Board bus. If it's a fancy one with TV's, it will inevitably be a D-list, straight-to-DVD feature, which will be either exceptionally violent or crude, or both.
-Stop in dusty town. Pick up more passengers.
-Fall asleep for about 45 minutes. Wake up, paranoid, check bra for the cash you've stuffed there, underwear for the rest of the wallet, reach into shirt to check for passport, pat the inner pocket of your jeans to make sure your ipod is still there. It would be rather unnerving for more than one reason if the ipod were not still there, not so much because you've lost your ipod, but rather since the music is still coming through the headphones you have crammed into your ears.
-Stop in another dusty town. Pick up some more passengers.
-Fidgit. Change position from the traditional upright, feet planted on floor position, to knee-to-chest, right leg out window. Accidentally kick Jenn in the temple in an attempt to stretch out. Hip cramp. Back spasm. Readjust. Invent new sitting positions for an hour or so, finally landing back in the traditional one.
-Sleep a little more. Head slams into window when bus hits a rough spot. Wake up, dry mouth, starting to feel desperate to get off bus. Whimper.
-Begin to obsessively check the time. Wait five minutes. Check again. In fact, forty five seconds have gone by. Good.
-Finally arrive to the bus terminal. Be accosted by taxi drivers. Pretend you know where your hostel is and use that bluff it to talk down the original price of the ride. ("No way, it's only like ten minutes from here. That price is exorbitant!") You've probably still been ripped off, but you're feeling triumphant about arguing the price down to half the original amount.
-Wander around city aimlessly, sleep in hostel, start the same thing over again the next day.

So, now that you know the general format of my last ten days, here's where I've been. I've stopped in Popayan, Colombia; Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador; Tumbes, Lima, and Cusco, Peru; La Paz, Bolivia, and finally Cochabamba. So many border crossings. I thought we were going to get robbed by the police in Tumbes (on the Ecuador border) for sure. Jenn and I hopped into this charming little moto-taxi, which is essentially a motorcycle-drawn buggy, and headed towards the airport (we flew from Tumbes to Lima to break up the trip). The sun was setting over the desert terrain, wind was whipping through our hair, and we were grinning with the feeling of freedom of no more buses for a few days when suddenly we were pulled over by the national police. A John Travolta-like specimen with a harsher face jumped out of the police pickup truck and shuffled his way over to us. He demanded my passport, and I asked him to please show me his ID first, since I had heard about police robbing travelers by the border. He looked incredulous, and not in the mood to play. ''But you see my uniform, my police truck, my GUN. I am a police officer. Now hand me your passport."
''I see all of those things, officer, but I would feel more comfortable if I saw your ID, just to be sure."
"In your country, do you demand to see the police officer's information?"
"Absolutely. It's expected."
"But I have a gun. Do you not see my gun?"
This went on for a few minutes, and the more he refused, the more I was sure that he wasn't really a cop, and at any given moment he would turn his precious weapon on me and take everything I owned. Somehow, though, the seemingly pointless conversation yielded favorable results, and he walked back to his truck, emerged with the ID, and shoved it in my face. He had also put on his police beret while he was back there, which I found charming. He was a police officer, after all. I gave him my passport, and after the customary five to ten minute waiting period in which he radioed into his base to check to see if I was a fugitive, he let us go.

Tumbes was weird. In the airport, we met a man from Lima who spoke beautiful English. He chatted with us about how he had studied in the U.S. in the 70's, went to some great concerts in Boston including Pink Floyd and the Styx. Then, while waiting in the departure lounge, we heard a POP! POP! BANG! which sounded like two shots from a cap gun and then a heavy object thrown into a glass wall. Our Lima friend burst through the doors leading out of the security checkpoint, followed by two or three security guards yelling, "Senor! Senor!" I was reminded of the chicken coop at Cecilia's farm, because this scene caused an eruption of whispering speculations among the seated passengers, and the sound was not unlike the noise the chickens would make whenever a large animal passed by the coop and tried to break in. "awwww que pasaaaaaaaa con ese hombreeeeee awwwwww visteeeeeeee? Awwww..." Anyway, the security guards grabbed him and pulled him into a secret room, where I assumed he would have to stay for hours answering questions, but oh no, as I sat down in my airplane seat, there he was, about ten rows up. I waved.

Since I've already been to Peru, I am okay with not really spending time there, at least on the way to Bolivia. I was just so anxious to get here, and I'm so glad I finally made it. Next week, Emily goes home and I head to Tarija, which is on the Argentine border, and is the winemaking region of the country. I will spend two weeks at an eco-resort on a lake, and then I hope to spend a couple of weeks on a vineyard. I'm itching to get my fingers back into the dirt.