I tried to be more scientific
about the bus I chose for this trip. Several bus companies made the journey to
La Paz and I interrogated each. “Do you have heat?” I asked one clerk.
“Yes!”
he said enthusiastically.
“Do
you have a toilet on board?”
“Yes!”
“Do
you have a VCR?”
“No.”
He looked dejected.
The
clerk at the next booth spoke up. “We have heat; we have toilets; we have
movies!”
“Great!”
I said. “What kind of movies do you show?”
“What
kind do you like?” he asked coyly.
“Oh,
no,” I said. “You tell me first. If I tell you what kind I like, you’ll say,
‘That’s what we have!’”
“Well,
I couldn’t really say,” he said.
“Do
you have action movies with a lot of violence?”
He
brightened. “Yes, we do!”
“Great!
That’s the kind of movie I hate!”
“Wait!
No, we don’t have that kind!”
“Ha!”
I said. “Now you say so!” I returned to the bus without the VCR, bought my
ticket, and went downstairs to wait.
The
Potosí bus terminal had a clever method for loading luggage. Most places had
men hauling the luggage up a ladder to the top of the bus, but in Potosí
someone had actually planned. The bus offices were on the second floor and had
patios that opened to the concourse. A company’s bus would park in the gate
corresponding to the office and the workers would merely carry the luggage from
the patio to the top of the bus -- no ladders necessary.
I’d
smartened up by the time I got to La Paz: I’d called for reservations and
warned the guy I’d be arriving at 5:00 a.m. I just didn’t know that I’d be arriving
bathed in sweat. The other buses had been so cold that I was absolutely
unprepared for the sweltering temperatures provided by El Dorado, Cia. When we
first pulled out of Sucre, I was excited that the bus wasn’t freezing. But
within an hour, I was pulling frantically at the window to open it a little. It
was so hot inside the bus that the windows were steaming, which meant that I
couldn’t see the stars.
I
did have my chance to see them when we stopped for our 11:30 p.m. supper break
at a lonely café huddling on the enormous plain. The aroma of grilled guinea
pig (or llama or whatever the catch of the day was) didn’t appeal to me, so I
wandered to the back in search of the bathroom. Someone figured out I wasn’t
from there and asked what I sought. “The bathroom,” I replied.
“Behind
the café,” he told me.
I
left the din of the café, which, despite the apparent lack of electricity in
the area, had electric lights and a television blaring “Guardia de la Bahía.”
“Guardia de la Bahía” means “Guards of the Bay.” The first time I heard the
title, I thought was a National Geographic program but then I learned it was
“Baywatch.” “Baywatch” and “Beverly Hills 90210” are two of the most popular
shows in Latin America. It’s hard to defend assertions that the U.S. lacks
culture when these two shows are among our biggest exports.
I
stepped into the enormous cold night and walked shivering to the back of the
building, looking for the outline of an outhouse. Twenty feet from the café, I
was out of range of the TV and there was no sound. Millions of stars flickered
overhead. I couldn’t see an outhouse. But dappling the ground were little dark shadows. In the darkness
cast by the café crouched even larger shadows. As I watched, some of them
unfolded and drifted away. It was then that I understood that the toilet
facilities were wherever I wanted them to be.
