Random Projects

(Sorry flitting all over the place at the moment, this post is Bolivia now!)

We’d heard the stories about robberies on this bus. One girl we met in La Paz had to punch a hand away from her bag. It was a night bus and she had to stay up the full 10 hours it takes. As we boarded our bus (we purposefully chose a day bus arriving about 10pm) we were warned no less than three times both on and off the bus by different bus officials to watch our hand luggage

As soon as we sat down on the back seats (we guessed that only having people in front of us was better than having to deal with people behind too) we knew something was wrong. A man came and sat next to Tam and put his bag down on the floor. He struck up a fairly friendly normal conversation in Spanish and eventually asked if we’d like some beer. Beer on a 14 hour bus with no toilet didn’t sound like a good idea so he wasn’t ever going to get anywhere with that line. Tam straight away said “no we have to look after our bags” at which point, with no other words he got up and left us. I’d noticed there were four of them and I couldn’t help but see that they didn’t crack open the beers themselves. Apparently on this trip people can also resort to drugging food and drink.

He’d left his bag on the floor by our seats though, surely a way to excuse himself occasionally as he went to forage. We had our Spanish line ready the next time he came back to tell him it would be better to move his bag and even considered striking before he could and nicking some his stuff but Coca leaves weren’t really worth it

Seeming surrounded by robbers we were getting very proud of our deductive and defensive powers and in some ways treating it like a bit of a game. When darkness came we were ready, but not quite for the blatant cheek of it! The robbers had spread out a bit, one on each double seat in front of our back seat, pretending to be asleep. The others seemed to have given up. As darkness fell a hand emerged from a “sleeping” robber across the floor. As blatant as you like it searched out Tam’s rolled up sleeping bag. What they thought they were going to do with it and how they thought they would move it I have no idea. This happened a couple more times. Each time I just shone a light at them and we could hardly stifle giggles (well it was slightly more explicit than that at the time!). Fortunately that was that and they were obviously only trying it on and taking things easy to grab. Of course it could be a lot more serious. A knife would certainly relieve us of anything they wanted but I guess that’s the same anywhere. The stupid part is, all we could do was protect our stuff and laugh at them. The places we’ve been on these busses are tiny, separated by hundreds of miles of mountains and deserts with only the odd goat herder to be seen. You’re definitely on your own in some of these places.