Pear-shaped day

8th June 2011

Oh look, we’re back in La Paz again.

Our bus headed off as planned this morning, but simply got snarled in the protest or whatever happening in a town on the route. They’ve piled rubble on the road and no-one is getting through. Determined drivers are taking various alarming dirt roads to try and bypass the town, but although our bus tried this it turned out to be a non-starter; various drivers coming the other way reassured us there was no way through.

So we’re back in La Paz. To make matters worse, I ate something bad yesterday (probably lunch at Tiwanaku) and only just managed the bus journey with a big dose of Immodium. The bus was also freezing cold, so I caught a chill to boot. Once we got back into our hotel room I just crawled under the covers and attempted not to die. This city has lost all its charm.

And of course our itinerary for the next two weeks is all planned and booked. So we need to get back on track or it all ends up wasted. Note to self: this is the one potential downside of a booked itinerary. The only option that works now is flying to Cusco, and our local booking agent could offer either an expensive flight tomorrow or a cheaper one in four days. I can’t face four days more in this hotel, so we’re going to put the flight down to “Emergency Fund” and go tomorrow.

I’m not happy with our UK booking agent, though. We learned today that the border to Peru has been closed for pretty much the last three weeks. We only finalised the itinerary and booked it a week ago. So why didn’t he inform us that the border was closed and our itinerary, if nothing changed, basically didn’t work? We’re now seriously out of pocket.

It’s evening and I think I’m not going to die. Maureen has been excellent, sorting out everything to do with our replanning while I just lay under the covers emitting the odd moan. In every life you get a few days that are just a write-off and this was definitely one of them.

Related Images:

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 9th, 2011 at 12:25 am and is filed under Bolivia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.