Blog: The Bus “Adventure” triple threat

This is the story of the triple bus threat: The Worlds most dangerous Road in an “Abortion”, THe Super Disco Death Bus and the 31 hours in a gas chamber hell.

Where do I even begin this post…. We were in La Paz, Bolivia, and quite happy to have received our Brazilian Visas, we packed our bags and embarked on a bus trip down the “Wolrds Most Dangerous Road”. This seems like years ago now!! At the time we were both impressed by the 80km stretch of road which hugged the mountainside, sometimes under waterfalls, sometimes where the 1.2 car length worth of road became .7 car lengths. But in retrospect, i cant even really bitch about it. It would just be wrong. The views were amazing, and our bus driver was quite competent. Lets put it this way; they organize Mountain-Bike trips down this road, which has to show that while quite dangerous, it wasnt that bad. But there were a few times we could look our the window of the bus and see nothing but an abyss.

This got us to Coroico; which was this beautiful mountain town of about 3000 people, which had unbeleivable views. We met 3 Brittish travellers who were on month 10 of a 12 month trip, and they were nice enough to share a few tokes while they told us of their adventures. We spent 2 days here, and easily could have spent weeks, but it was time to leave… Our second bus adventure started off in the back of a pickup truck with our bags and 13 backpackers, as we went from Coroico to a spot where our bus was to pick us up 15-20 minutes after we got dropped off. This was dragged out to a 3 hour wait in the blistering sun, and after 3 busses that were all going to our destination passed, all with the message “next bus, 15 minutes”, we were more than happy to get on. Before we could even manuver to our seats, the bus driver (who seemed to be on some hell bent mission) proceeded to take us arround turns at breakneck speeds and i was sure this would be my last bus ride EVER. And at this point, he turned on the Disco!!! Thats right, disco music, loud enough that i’m sure everyone was going deaf, and it was at this point that i turned to Stewart and said “We are acctually going to die to disco!!!!” to which stewart responded “i figured it was going to be AC/DC”. It was a little disheartening when the music changed to rock and roll, for like 15 minutes, and the second song was Back In Black!!At some point, we either got used to the intense driving style of our driver, or we just accepted death, but second half of the 15 hour trip we were more at ease (this also may have been due to the fact that it was night-time, and the cliffs were invisable to us). One thing is for sure, i will never forget the Super Disco Death Bus! (Disco Stu no longer likes Disco Music!!)….

this brings us to Rurrenbaque, a nice little Jungle Settlement, along the river. Unfortunatly, we only spent 15 hours here, and got maybe 3 hours sleep; so tired and a little drunk, we got on the WORST BUS OF ALL TIME!!! Theres no easy way to describe this bus. so here goes: We thought we were fortunate that we got a window seat this time, which im sure was the only reason we surrvived, but that was the only upside to the entire 31 hour journey. About 3 hours in, we were crusing allong at our 35-45 km/h pace, when the bus came to an abrupt halt. We soon realized we were stuck in the mud, and for half an hour the majority of the men (leaving woman, children and Gringos – oh yeah, i forgot to mention EVERYONE was Bolivian except us, and they definatly thought of us as “odd” to say the least) got out and tried to push. I thought they were making progess, but apparently they just gave up, hoping that the rain would calm down a bit.

It certainly didnt, and for somewhere between 3-5 hours we sat in what can only be described as a Nazi designed gas chamber… we could see the humidity in the air, every baby on the bus was crying, people were complaining, i was sweating, tired and misserable. We soon realized that the 40 degree heat was going to kill us, and thats when the mosquitos began to come in through the open windows. This is when the Bolivians (obviously used to the conditions) closed the windows, and at this point, more so than ever before in my life, i iwished that i was dead (and i REALLY do mean this!!!!!!!!!). Eventually, the bus driver decided to try again, and with nothing other than luck on his side we managed to pull out of the mud pit that we had driven into, and we kept going.

The next 25 hours went by mostly uneventful, (which doesnt mean that it wasnt as excruiating as the first 7) and somehow or another we survived (with 2L of water between the two of us, and a bag of digestive cookies).  We arrived in Guajaramirm at 7 in the morning, and knowing that we were short on money (did i mention they dont have ATM’s in the jungle!?!) walked the 3km to the river, caught a boat to the other side of the river (which separates Bolivia and Brazil) and made it to Porto Vehlo with about 2 dollars to spare.  If you made it through the entire post (sorry about the length, but you had to FEEL the pain we did), you have a small idea of how horrible the last 3 days were. Tomorow we are getting on a riverboat and meandering down the river for a 4 day cruise, for which we have allready bought hammocks, and will get us halfway to the Atlantic Ocean. From there we catch another 4 day cruise, which takes us to the mouth of the Amazon, and onto the sunny beaches of the North Brazillian coast……….