Home » Paraguay Bolivia » Off the Bus - Paraguay/Bolivia [2]

At 1:00am I remember stopping at a grimy Esso petrol station where I got off to use the toilet. This was unlike the rest of the men on the bus who stepped off and urinated where they felt like it. A bush, a tree, the gas station forecourt...

Off the Bus - Paraguay/Bolivia [2]

Matthew
2004-03-05 23:57:14

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to waste disposal - seeing the rubbish lying at the side of the road was like completing an exercise in defeat. It was a pointless waste of time just as trying to explain to her that what she was doing was wrong would have been. The drivers were still busy making adjustments but eventually reappeared and surprisingly got the bus started again. Things did not sound as if they were running smoothly but at least we were moving.

More dusty road, scrub, dry bushes, cacti, Bottle Trees, cattle and then the first sign that we were getting close to some form of civilisation, an oil refinery with a huge flame spouting forth from a tall metal chimney. About half an hour later we came to the first place that qualified as a town. We were in a place called Villamontes that boasted a single asphalt road, one-storey mud brick dwellings and a few trees that had most of their branches sawn off. The buildings were pretty shoddy and in various states of disrepair but there was also a small pizza restaurant with folding chairs and tables stacked against the wall inside. The bus parked by a mud wall and more fiddling about was done underneath it. I looked out the window to see what had caused all the grating noises - a large mangled exhaust pipe had been removed and laid on the road. Just as I was wondering how the bus could be repaired a mechanic turned up in a car that could have belonged to any mechanic the world over. There were patches of plastic filler all over the bodywork, a stick-on sun visor and, for some reason, a screwdriver jammed in the passenger door. He drove off with one of our drivers and the broken exhaust and all I could think was "How are we going to get a new exhaust? We're in the middle of nowhere, houses made of mud, people driving around in vehicles held together with string and no windscreen, flea bitten dogs scampering about - you can't possibly buy parts for a bus around here - can you?"

While we waited, the ...