Travels with a Waygoer

The Waygoer jumps out of nowhere next to me in the cafeteria of the hotel. I'm very happy to see him, but I think the contrary is even more so.

"In all these years, never have I come across anyone I know somewhere in the world. It's incredible, you just have no idea how that feels..."

I give him the keys to my room so he can take a shower and soon we're walking around La Paz with an Italian and an Argentinean he met on the bus. I feel a bit like a local after 4 nights in La Paz and show them the sights -- the Witches Market, the University, the best change bureau, the place I had my phone stolen...

Suddenly an American girl stops me on the street and asks if any of us smokes pot. The guys are kinda sorta shaking their heads, trying to understand what she wants. Then she announces that she she's trying to get rid of some marijuana left over from a friend. The Waygoer asks her what quantity and what quality. The unusually precise answers he gets, convince us that the girl's story must be bogus. We politely decline and walk over to a restaurant for lunch.

The Waygoer's story of the brutal 45-hour bus journey from Buenos Aires pretty much settles the evening plans and everyone retreats to their chambers early. I notice a worrying group of Brits drinking a bottle of rum in the lobby. Worse is that their rooms are next to mine. Sure enough my suspicions are confirmed at 4am when the drunk tourists make a big ruckus outside my door. For a second before fully waking, I feel right at home in Soho. This time though, revenge is mine as the Waygoer shows up at 8am and we discuss our plans as loudly as we can right outside their doors.

We decide to take the 2pm bus to Oruro, so we get to the the bus station a little before, tickets in hand, gear on the back. We watch cute little kinds clean out the garbage of recyclable materials and then get on the bus.

The scheduled duration of our trip is 3 hours. However, just as we get comfortable on the half-empty bus finally departing La Paz, it stops on the outskirts and the driver spends an hour looking for more people going to Oruro. So in addition to spending an extra hour in the decrepit vehicle we’re now completely cramped. Somehow I manage to sleep for an hour and spend the rest of the trip wondering how the Waygoer could bear a 45-hour torture like this.

When the bus finally gets to Oruro it’s dusk and starting to rain. We grab a taxi to the hotel and I marvel at the traffic. Oruro is a city of 250,000 people and has a reasonable number of cars. What it doesn’t have are traffic lights. Not one! So cars get through intersections any way they can – honking, lurching forward, blocking other cars – an ordeal, which usually consumes about 5 minutes each time. So it takes us almost an hour to get through the 10 blocks to the hotel.

No one at the reception speaks English, but I still mange to find out that there’s no such thing as Wi-Fi here. As we go up to the room, the bellboy is very concerned that the Waygoer doesn’t have a reservation at the overbooked hotel, yet is coming up to the room. Once we reassure him that the Waygoer will find a room in another hotel, he actually calls up the front desk to report the situation. I’m quite annoyed, but let it go, as we have to start looking for a place for the Waygoer.  The next hour as the rain escalates, we go through some of the shadiest hostels and depressing lodgings I’ve seen in my life.

The Waygoer is particularly concerned that the prices for the festival weekend in these horribly looking alojamentos are completely unreasonable and in most cases quoted only as doubles and triples. Apparently there are no single rooms in this city. We give up the search for the night and head over to the one somewhat decent hotel where we negotiate down the price for the night and the Waygoer tries out half the beds in a quest for the hardest mattress available.

Mission accomplished, we go to dinner at the one restaurant recommended in my book. It’s not bad and we spend the evening arguing the good and bad sides of Bulgaria. I’m strongly in the positives with the Waygoer providing solid opposition. By the time we walk out of the restaurant, I’ve forgotten which part of the world I’m in.

We walk to my hotel in silence. Friday should be interesting, as we will most likely have to spend the day searching for a bed for the Waygoer and a Wi-Fi hub for me in a town filling to the brim with revelers whose New Year’s Eve, Christmas, Halloween and Easter all roll into one celebration – La Diablada.