|
British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
|
Home Copyright
© |
A
Day I'll Never Forget by Margaret. M. Firmston No-one was surprised the hotel still had no water that morning. We had slept in as many thick clothes as possible, including woolly hats - no wonder frozen pipes had stopped the town's water supply. July is cold at 4000 metres in Potosi, Bolivia. It was rumoured some parts of the town had their water restored - not ours. We piled into a minibus for the trip to a silver mine. On the way we bought the customary presents for the miners - dynamite, detonators, fuses, etc., which anybody can buy freely, even children. We added cigarettes and large bags of Coca leaves - illegal in England, but chewed constantly by miners to keep hunger pangs at bay. We bumped
our way up a rough mountain track, covered in fine dust - maybe the lack
of a wash didn't matter! In the mining area we saw the 'clinic'. Most
of us hunted through our bags to find plasters or antiseptic to add to
the poor supply available. Ten minutes
later, we came to a wide space at the end of the first level. Here was
a shrine to a local god. The figure had a cigarette in its mouth and bottles
and Coca leaves strewn beside it, offerings given by miners for their
protection. There was a stench of sulphur. Some of us felt slightly queasy
and decided against attempting the second level. Those who did, returned
wishing they hadn't narrow crevices to be crawled through, long sheer
drops, all in utter blackness. The guide and the bus driver had bought a huge bag of potatoes while we were earlier getting presents for the miners. Now they made a fire and piled up some stones, leaving a hole in the centre where they poured the potatoes, covering the lot with the fine grey dust on the ground. Soon, our 'meal' was perfectly cooked. Once the 'oven' had been dismantled, finding the potatoes was quite an art; they were now the same colour as the earth and the stones. They were delicious, provided you didn't mind the odd bits of grit left behind in the process of peeling them. At least we could wash grubby hands in the pool. We arrived at the bus station to get to La Paz - throngs of people with bundles. Bolivians accept resignedly and with little protest finding their seats taken or having to sit on the bus floor. The women's skirts, their baskets of goods to sell and the child in the shawl on their back take up a lot of room on buses. If you buy from them, their purses are hidden under voluminous folds in their skirts; a bottled drink is quickly decanted into a plastic bag which you hold gathered round the straw. To our surprise some of the road had tarmac, but this merely gave the driver an excuse to drive on whichever side of the road seemed the shortest between two points whenever he came to a bend. When the usual road reappeared, it once more felt like being in a high speed wheelbarrow. There was one 'comfort' stop - no 'loos', however - a nun lifted her skirts only yards from the bus, but the rest of us headed for a nearby wall. We spread ourselves at discreet intervals along its length it was a very bright moonlit night!. Back into the bus until the early hours when we would have to stay on hard benches in La Paz bus station until the hotel was ready for us. Maybe a cold night in a hotel without water has some advantages after all! First published in VISA issue 56 (June 2004) |