It was supposed to be easy

It was supposed to be easy - just a simple little overnight bus trip from Tupiza to Potosi. 230km, 10 hours, arriving at about 6am in the morning. Simple really. Well, it would have been except for the minor problems of two extremely sore arses, and a miners strike.....

Tupiza, in south west Bolivia, is a fantastic little place. A town of 20,000 set amongst still more red rock canyons, it has a distinct western feel. Western, as in wild west, that is. In fact, 85km to the west, in the tiny pueblo of San Vicente, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid finally met their end after robbing a large payroll shipment just outside Tupiza (ok, how many of you who haven´t seen the Paul Newman film, actually knew that they ended up in Bolivia of all places? I have to admit, I didn´t). So, you can easily imagine the type of countryside that we`re talking about - dry hills, box canyons, and desert. And so, it being the wild west afterall, what better way to see it than from horseback?

We hired a guide and a couple of horses in Tupiza, and set out for a two day horse trek. We spent the night in a small mud house with a traditional agricultural family in the village of Quiriza, about 25km from Tupiza, before heading back the next day. Along the way we passed through some beautiful canyons, and some very bare, barren country. But the real highlight were the traditional campesiños (bolivian peasant class) that you met along the way. In the midst of all this red rock and very dry, arid country, were people eeking out an existence through subsistence agriculture. It was fascinating to see. The river at the bottom of the canyon was diverted into small irrigation schemes that produced maize (and garlic for market). A team of two Donkeys with a single furrow plough and a man walking behind worked the fields. Each morning, you would see women disappearing into the hills to graze their herd of goats, and they would then return again at sunset (note: Bolivian women swear at their livestock that go astray with more ferocity than any New Zealand farmer). The houses were very simple, mud and clay constructions thatched with bamboo, but nonetheless warm and cosy. As you can imagine, it was very, very different to anything either of us had seen before.

But the impact of the trip was not limited to a new appreciation of the campesiños - it also left some rather tangible scars on our bodies as well. After two days in the saddle, my backside was rather, ahhhh, black and blue. And maybe just a tad chafed as well.... Rather painful, it has to be said. Normally that would have been fine, except.... that night we took the overnight bus to Potosi. Now, Bolivian buses are, it has to be said, not quite up to the standard of their southern neighbours. In fact, they are rather crap, actually. Mix that with the roads (10 hours to drive 230km?), and travelling by bus here can be an exercise in endurance. Then mix that with being unable to sit comfortably in the seat for more than five minutes because your arse is so sore, and you´re on the way to the journey from hell...

But of course, it didn`t end there. We woke up about 6am to find the bus parked at the top of a hill. I assumed it had broken down (not unheard of in this country) and eventually went to have a look. We were at the end of a long, long line of buses and trucks, stretching for several kilometres down the road ahead of us. "What on earth is going on?". Well, Potosi is a large mining town, and it turned out that the miners were on strike, and had blockaded all roads into and out of Potosi. Unimpressed by the prospect of repeating the bus ride from hell back to Tupiza, there was only one thing to do - Dorthe and I got our packs and started walking towards Potosi in the brisk sub-zero morning air (the altitude of 4200m didn´t really help much either). Fortunately, they were letting foot passengers cross the barricades, and so we managed to get across - on the other side there were a load of taxis waiting, and so we finally managed to get into Potosi, at last, without any further adventures. It was, after all, supposed to be an easy trip.