Hitchhiking the World: Chap 7 (Bolivia)

---March 4th 2016---

To that point, I had had the opportunity to cross many borders. I’ve always hated crossing them as vendors by the hundreds invade your personal place to offer you stuff you don’t want, but this one was different. There were tonnes of vendor, but everything was in a calm atmosphere. I stopped at a street food stand, where I enjoyed a last Peruvian meal, and hung out with the locals and crossed the bridge toward Bolivia, also quite calm. But every good has its limits as the border had only one agent and a 2h wait to enter the country. It sure was boring, but eventually, I got through, got my stamp, crossed town, and 20min later, got a ride to La Paz. They were three in the car, and they were definitely great guys.

My original plan was to bypass La Paz, using the road toward Viacha, but instead, got an invitation for two nights in La Paz. With my blisters still hurting, this sounded great; a day without shoes, and without walking.

We got in La Paz at around 3:45 in the afternoon. The traffic was slow for the car, but for the motorcycle, this wasn’t a problem as they were riding between cars. Despite being illegal in the northern country, here in Latin America, it’s legal, and everyone does it. Unfortunately, as the traffic was at a near stop, two ladies decided to cross the street. Rather than stopping to lock for motorcycle passing between the two lanes, they just ran, and at the same time, a police motorcyclist was passing. The police crashed into the two girls throwing the three of them on the ground. Two of them came up, but the third one stayed on the ground screaming in pain, holding her left leg. As she tried to raise it, we saw the broken ankle fully loose. As the police was trying to remove its motorcycle from over the poor lady, the other kept on hitting the police officer. People rushed to help screaming what to do as other were honking at the traffic jam; it was a real mess.

After hanging out with the shoemakers for two nights, I got a ride out of town where I started hitching. To my surprise, I barely waited until I got a ride. As usual, I explained my trip as we were driving. I even took the time to explain what hitchhiking was all about, but as I got out, the driver intercepted me telling me to pay him. Well, that was a surprise; I had just explained hitchhiking was a money free mode of transportation, and I even asked him if he was a taxi driver when I entered, I thought he understood he wouldn’t get money from me. With a feeling of guilt, I re-explained my situation, and a little disappointed, he signed me I was free to go; I guess improvised cab are as prominent in Bolivia as they are in Peru.

I was now in Patacamaya, and on my way to visit the Chulpa of road 4. This was a little scary as I was heading into one of the many nowhere of Bolivia, not even sure my destination existed. In fact, I had only seen two pictures of these ruins, and never got to find information other than coordinates. I got myself a ride, and headed down the road. I was very focused on looking for these ruins until at the very last minute, I saw hidden behind a hill the ruins I had seen pictures of. I instantly asked the driver to halt, and got out. It turns out that not only the name of the location I had was wrong, but the coordinate were as well wrong; the only right information was the road it was on.

With just two picture and miss placed coordinate, I still managed to find these two guys

I took the time to take a few pictures of the eroded burial monument, and got back on the road. That wasn’t going to be easy as I was about 100km from the nearest town, looking like I’d being kicked out of a car, but my usual luck gave me a truck within the first half-hour. I asked the guy to drop me at the intersection heading to Totora, but instead got a ride all the way to the Chilean border. I tried hitching for two hours on a tiny dirt road heading to no-man’s-land, but eventually quit and decided to head back to Patacamaya. Hitchhiking back proved quite easy. Patacamaya greeted me with a black out. Now this was my first night in Bolivia, other than La Paz, so seeing the town without light got me a little scared; does Bolivia have light at night, I know it isn’t the richest country, but is it that poor? Of course, it wasn’t; this was just a weird coincidence. I found a small restaurant, ate, and found a house in construction where I hide for the night. It may have worked for humans, but the local dogs didn’t fall for it as all night they came barking at my tent.

I thought the Chulpa ruins were going to be one of the hardest locations to reach hitchhiking, but unluckily for me, my next destination was harder. Getting a ride from Patacamaya to Cochabamba wasn’t even worth mansionning, a truck picked me up after only 10 minutes on the road, and 5h later, I was in Cochabamba. From there, I hitched three cars within the city limits to head out of town and to Tarata, so far so good, but this is where things got a little tougher. I now needed to hitch 80km of dirt road heading to a dead-end, and night wasn’t too far away. Thankfully, 40 minutes it all that took to get a bus to host me in. That being said, not being a client, I was the one taking all the sacrifices. I spent the first 3h sitting only on half of my right butt cheek. Squeezed between an old lady and an annoying cowboy taking way more place that he could have, I was stuck with major cramp, but had nothing I could do about it as the bus was full, and getting out wasn’t an option. As usual, I just toughed it out until eventually, enough people got out for me to have a full seat for me. At least for 10 minutes as new people got in, and once more, I needed to make myself small, squeezing me over the engine box, slowly burning for the next 2h.

Finally, Torotoro!! I can finally get out of this hell-hole, and go to bed. Obviously, though, I need to find this bed, or place to lie for the night. I found a small field and threw my tent on it, spending my first night in Torotoro with the local cows.

The next morning, I snoozed until 6:30 and got to the local guiding office. The night before, I had being told it wasn’t possible to walk on the trail alone, and that every activity needed a guide. This definitely wasn’t part of the plan, but after having endured the bud ride, I was not going to back down. Plus, after having done the different tours, I can see why they are obligatory, the different sites are impossible to navigate if you don’t know exactly where to go. There was one last problem though, the price for a guide is for six person, and I’m alone; I need to find five new friends willing to go on an adventure with me. Easier done than said, for once; I found within a few minutes five other French speaking partners, with as a bonus one that speaks perfect Spanish (our personal translator). We got in the car, and drove the 21km needed to reach or first destination of the day: la Ciudad de Itas. No, this isn’t an actual city (ciudad in Spanish), but five beautifully sculpted “caves” with naturally colored wall. As far as photography goes, it sure was a great first destination, but the highlight was the magical algae found in one of the “caves”. At first, the guide pointed at a normal looking pond telling us how amazing looking it was, but none of us seemed very impressed by it. He then told us to head to one of the entrance of the cave and all of a sudden, the very normal looking pond changed color. I must say, that I have no idea of what kind of phenomenon happens, but depending of the angle you take, the pond will change from a transparent water with a stone red color to a fluorescent yellow-greenish pond. Definitely the first time I’ve seen such a thing. After having done the tour of the Ciudad de Itas, we climbed back in the car and drove back toward the Umajalanta Cave, this time a real cave. Our car may have broken down on the way there, but we still managed to get there and enjoy the second half of the tour. To this day, I’ve visited many caves, and seen amasing one, much better than the Umajalanta Cave, but never cave exploring have being this fun. As you can imagine, Cave exploring in Bolivia doesn’t have the same safety concerns as the one in the United-Stated. The cave was light free, meaning we only had our headlamp to explore the cave. We crawled through narrow passage leading to cliff we had to climb down without having a place to rest, repel ourselves of on slippery rocks and had to slide through a tiny tunnel, but this squeezing and sliding brought us to a small underground lake with blind catfish, which was nice.

The inside of one of the 5 cathedral looking cave of Ciudad de Itas

The next day, half of our group left, but after having found two new exploration buddies, we headed to the Vergel Canyon. We walked along a dry river bed until we reach a breath taking lookout of the canyon. Not long after the lookout, we climbed down the 700 steps leading to the bottom of the canyon where we went for a swim in the 12°C water. I got to wash myself, cliff jump, and got swim under the waterfalls. Unfortunately, this swim had a cost, 700 steps to climb back up. We all got back pretty tired from our hike, but I could stop there, I wanted to visit the Turtle Graveyard, clay dunes with a few turtle fossil, or so they say. When I got there, I quickly realised there was no turtle fossils, they were all in the museum to protect them from the erosion. The gesture is nice, but don’t publicise the turtle’s shells in the dune if they are all in dirty glass boxes in a dim light room. Oh well, you can’t get it all. After having visited nearly the totality of Torotoro, I still felt one thing was missing. I had seen many dinosaurs track during our different tours, but none came out nice on the camera, not like the one I had seen on the different pictures I had seen, so as I headed back to the guide office to grab my bag, I asked where were the dino tracks from the picture, pointing at one of the posters, and just like that, I got myself a private tour of a closed region of Torotoro, and there they were, the nicest tracks I could imagine. I don’t know why they don’t include these tracks in the different tours, but I felt privileged to walk along them.

I guess I'm 65 million years late to see a wild ankylosuarus

It was now time to head back to civilization, but this wasn’t going to be easy. I walked to the edge of town, sat down on a rock and waited. The clouds were menacing, and eventually, a thunder shower showed up. Still sitting on my rock, I watch the lightning bolts bypass me until eventually, one of the lightning hit the mountain in front of me, ending the nerve racking show. After nearly 2h on my rock, I finally saw a car halting before me. They had no room in the front, so I had to ride the back of the pickup. Normally, this isn’t a problem, but by the look of the cloudy and rainy valley up ahead, I knew this wasn’t going to be an easy ride. To my surprise, the closer we got to the clouds, the less there were, and after five freezing hour, not a drop of water had fallen, actually, a fully visible half-rainbow ended up covering the valley. Torotoro may be the hardest location I had hitched to at that point, but it sure brought me a lot of joy. Definitely a place to visit, not hitchhiking that is.

The beautiful valley of Torotoro

Back in Cochabamba, I was dropped in the center of the city. It was dark, I had no place to camp, and I was hungry. My plan, walk to the edge of town, about 3 to 4h night walk, and doing so, find a place to eat. Finding a place to eat wasn’t the hard part as I found a small chicken restaurant open. In that restaurant were two bus drivers. I didn’t know it, but they were my guardian angel. I started talking with them, and explained my trip. They were very intrigued by my budget as in most Latin American country they don’t understand the concept of long term budget. In North America, we save money for our retirement, but down in Latin America, if you get $10, you spend $10. I explained to them that when I say I don’t have money, I don’t mean I don’t have money, but the money that I have spread over the time I’m expecting to travel leaves me “money less” as a day by day budget. “If I have $100us for one day, I’m rich right? But if I have $100us for one hundred day, am I rich?” I told them. These two questions helped me explain the concept, and as I was getting ready leave and cross town for a place to stay, they gave me 70 bolivianos to help finish my trip in Bolivia, as they wanted my daily budget to let me eat more than once a day; and boy did it help me. Not only did they give me a surprising amount of money, but worried for my sleeping dilemma, they fallowed me from a distance to make sure I knew what I was doing. This proved quite helpful as some guy invited me over to his “house”. I walked with him to a park, and got stunned by the “house” of the guy. It was the beneath of a gazebo. This seemed funny at first, but when I entered, I was greeted by a rat, and a floor covered in all sorts of trash. The hygiene of this sleeping hole was too intense for me, 4h walk seemed much better, but as I tried to leave this dump, the guy started trying to make me feel guilty of accusing him of trying got rob me. This wasn’t the case, but when he started asking me about how much my camera was worth, I just shut the conversation and got out of id “house”. Needless to say, he followed me, but my two guardian angels entered the park and came to pick me up. The three of them had a heated conversation and after 20 minutes, we finally got rid of this homeless. I don’t know if he really wanted to rob me, but one thing for sure, I was relieved walking between my two bodyguards. Their help didn’t stop there as they stopped a couch buss from the company they were working for and sneaked me in the garage of the couch bus for me to spent the night sleeping in that couch bus. Finally, my night was over. After having walked a full day, hitch for 5h on freezing rough roads, and nearly getting mugged, I could sleep in peace.

The next day, the bus drove me to a gas station where after having talked to my first car I got a ride to the edge of town, and without much wait, I got a ride from Cochabamba to Huari with a fishing fanatic going fishing in the region, but from there, hitchhiking double in difficulty. My target was the Tunupa Volcano. I got a ride out of Huari to Quillacas where I had to wait for 1h55min before getting a ride to Salinas. Night was approaching and I wanted to win Jiripa. I hitch but only got a ride halfway. I ended up in the detour of a detour from a road without traffic in, as you can imagine, the middle of nowhere. I had no food, and there was no food around. I camped in an abandoned ruin and in the morning, I realised how bad of a place I was stuck in. I was hours walk from the “main” road, in the desert, without food, and very few water left. I thought the best thing was to hitch back to Salinas and try again, but this time only enter a car ending where I wanted to. I saw a motorcycle in a distance I quickly realised I needed to walk to that intersection to have any sort of traffic as there was no cars in town. Fortunately, a salt truck showed up, and I managed to catch its ride to the intersection of the two roads heading to Jiripa. From there, I stayed 2h without seeing a single car heading my way, a new record. It took so long until I saw that motorcycle that I laid on the dirt road and nearly fell asleep. This wasn’t the end of it as I had to cross the hill leading to the salt flat on a two wheel vehicle. No helmet and with 45lbs obstructing my back and killing my abs, I rode the soft sandy and heavily rocky road. The conditions were impossible, and we almost fell due to the soft sand, but I was starting to be out of options. I needed to reach Jiripa as it was a touristy town with food, but not being in the touristy season, I only got to a deserted town without food. To my luck, as I was walking to the slat flat, a car passed by. They were going to the cemetery for an hour and told me they could pick me up afterward and bring me back to the Pan-American Highway, but about 15min later, as I was taking a few pictures of the landscape, I saw them leave without me. Discouraged, I walked back toward the town, sat under a tree and waited. Finally, the same motorcycle how had picked me up passed by and despite knowing the difficulty of having me on his bike, he accepted to drive back to the intersection. As for me, I knew this was a dangerous ride, but thirst and hunger were starting to be problematic and I knew I had a lot of highly difficult hitchhiking to reach Salinas, so I hopped on. Another rocky ride later and I was back at the intersection, and in the not too far distance, I could see a truck. I ran toward it, and got myself a ride in less than a minute. This truck brought me to Salinas where I got to eat my first meal in 26h15min, an incredibly tasty steak of lama. I walked to the edge of town and instantly got a ride to the Juya Quta Crater, a crated in the middle of the altiplano with a red lake in the center. The good news was that as we were driving toward the crater, I notice the truck I had ridden before, so I knew I had a ride out of the crater, and just like that, I got my ride to Oruro. I have to admit having defied the odds on my way out of this road.

Red laked crater of Juya Quta

Getting a ride to Oruro was good news as I was now at the intersection of the road heading to Chile, my next destination, but entering at night a city wasn’t as good news. I walked for a few hours and eventually gave up. Rather than trying to camp on the edge of town, I instead ended up sleeping hidden behind few branches tucked around my bag. The shade of the tree hid me a little bit, but I was far from being invisible. I didn’t sleep very well as dog were intrigued and lots of buses pulled over lighting my spot as people would climb out, but no one seemed to have seen me, and I didn’t get bothered.

At 5am, I decided to pack up my gear and aim for the edge of town, which turns out to have being only 10 minutes down the road. I hitch a ride to Huachacalla where I tried to hitch to Chile; live, though, had a different plan. Some guy stopped next to me and said: “Listen, I’m not heading your way, but if you want, I can bring you to some ruins. Are you in?” Thinking they were the painted Chulpas I had seen pictures of, I accepted. Turns out it wasn’t, but it was much better. The Chulpas are ancient burial monument, like my first destination in Bolivia, but most of the bones have being stolen or removed, but not these one. He brought me to a tiny town, about half-an-hour down rocky roads, where I got to see real ancient skulls and bones. Unfortunately, I had no more battery in my camera, so my driver brought me in that tiny town, lost in the valley, and invited me to a friend’s house where I got to recharge my battery. After an hour in town, we headed down to another site with almost twenty different Chulpas, all filled with skulls, bones, and even some old piece of clothing. This was incredible, the true meaning of hitchhiking; I had a private guide bringing me in uncharted ruins filled with ancient human skulls, and as a bonus, he was a dentist, and could tell me the age of the skulls only by looking at the teeth. Back in Huachacalla, he invited me to his cousin’s house where we drank a little bit and finally, he invited me to stay for the night in his dentistry office. I may not have reached Chile, but I had a place to stay for the night.

My first look at actual human skull

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Country's Statistics

Number of nights : 22
Numbers of days on the road: 17
Percentage of invitation at night : 41%
Overall waiting time : 34h
Average wait : 25min
Longest wait : 2h 35min
Male vs female : 76% male – 1% female – 23% mixed
Total amount of rides : 80
Average spending per day : -15,63$/day
Place visited : 25
Total km : 6 674km
Meal offered : 24%

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