La Paz

Well, Bolivia has certainly been an adventure already. I bought a ticket for a noon bus to La Paz from Copacabana yesterday from a very sweet lady who made sure that I had a good lunch before I got on the bus at 12:15. The bus didn´t leave for another half hour after that -- it´s important to ensure that there is standing room only in the bus *before* you allow it to leave town, yes? All was more or less smooth until the bus lost a part going around a sharp bend in the mountains. We stopped to pick it up (I don´t know what it was) and continued on. Then the bus stopped in a random town square (far too early to be in La Paz, never mind that the town was too small) and everyone started to get off the bus. I asked the driver what was happening and to the best of my understanding we were having a short break. Okay. Odd, but okay. Or not!! It turned out (thank goodness for two fellow travellers who had gone this route before) that we had to buy passage on a small boat to cross the strait, after which time we´d reboard the bus on the far side. The bus apparently gets its own boat across the water. Of course! Because that was so obviously why we were stopping there... Oy.

Anyway, we continued on our merry way until with a large bang, some smoke and quite a lot of bumps, we blew the front right tire. Yup. Welcome to the bus system in Bolivia!! Most of the passengers got off to watch the procedure (which I also did, eventually). Apparently the best way to jack up a bus is to pile up quite a few large rocks and then drive up onto them... Oy. The replacement tire had little in the way of tread, which concerned me until I saw the one it was replacing. ¨Smooth as a baby´s bum¨ was the way my fellow passenger described it... Yeesh...

So yeah. Here are a few pics, of the bus, the tire, and the scenery where we um, had a little break to catch some fresh air?? :)