As of a few days ago, my travels had left me in the town of Villamontes, Bolivia. For the first time in a good couple of weeks, I finally had a hot shower. After spending the first month and a half of my trip high in the cold mountain elevations, this would seem to come as a blessing. The only problem with this shower however, was that the mercury outside had risen to over 45 degrees, and the last thing i wanted was heat. But of course, there was no cold water, and my only option of attempting to cool myself down was to bathe under the water that was only slightly cooler than the air, literally almost fighting fire with fire.
So, after only arriving early that morning, I decided that i was getting the hell out of town, and booked a train ticket for 7:30 that night. I´d had enough of the heat and it wasn´t even midday yet. I chilled out for a while in the local park, downed what was possibly the most refreshing beer I´ve ever had, and contemplated life for a while until it was time to head to the train station. The train, i thought, would be a nice alternative to the slow, crowded, bumpy bus rides I was becoming all to familiar with. I was wrong.
7pm. Hour Zero.
I arrive at the train station a half hour early to purchase my ticket for the 9 hour train ride north to the city of Santa Cruz. Once again, my useless Lonely planet book (I don´t know why the damn thing is so popular, its an incorrect piece of shit) was wrong, and the train ride was 11 hours, not 9. No big deal i thought, whats another 2 hours. I search around the train station to buy some food and water to take with me, but to my suprize there is nothing. No big deal i thought, people will sell me stuff on the train. I wait patiently, swatting away giant bugs and mosquitos, and gazing in amazement at the lightning show that is taking place above the nearby mountains.
8pm. Hour one.
The train still hasn´t come yet. Now a half hour late, my paranoid self begins to worry that the train isn´t coming, simply because there are hardly any other people around and I feel like i´m just hanging out in some abandoned train station. I wander off and pee on the train tracks, just because i can. While doing so, i hear a horn in the distance, and 15 minutes later, the train light appears in the distance as it slowly chugs its way along into the station. I board the train to find that my seat sucks. most of the seats have some sort of window access, but mine: wall. window beside the seat in front of me, window beside the seat behind me, but no window beside me. This really wouldn´t be that much of a problem normally, but remember, its fucking hot and i have no water to compensate for the liters of sweat that are leaking out of me every hour! I spend a good 2 minutes cleaning off my seat which is covered in dust, dirt, and sand, and i can´t figure out why. I sit down to find out that the seat is horribly uncomfortable, and prepare myself for a long 11 hour journey.
9pm. Hour two.
I´ve by now realized why my seat was so covered in shit. Because of the desert like landscape, and the fact that the window in front of me is wide open, all the dust and debris that the train engine stirs up seems to perfectly time itslef to fly in through the window and land on me. Even though its dark, i have to put on my sunglasses to stop myself from becoming blind. The guy in the seat in front of me tries to recline his seat but i take a stand. I´m tired of being treated as a stupid gringo, and figure since a lot of people are pricks to me, i´m gonna fight back. No more nice guy from canada. Give the guy credit, he kept trying to push his seat back, but every time he met my knee. I wasn´t budging.
10pm. Hour three.
buddy is still trying to recline his seat and keeps turing around to give me evil death stares. I play either dumb, pretending to stare out what would be a window if i had a normal seat, or I point at my legs to show that i can´t move them. Bolivia is not made for people taller than 5ft. If i sat up, i could accomodate his desire to recline, but i don´t feel like trying to sleep in an upright position. he can go to hell. I´m also starting to get hungry and am really thirsty. where are the annoying people that always seem to board busses and trains and sell you shit now? They never come. I guess they just don´t work this route. sometimes i think the world is out to spite me. 9 more hours to go.
11pm. Hour four.
I have a deep moment of reflection. Why am I here? What am i doing? I ponder this thought for almost an hour, attempting to answer the question to my own satisfaction. This desire in me to travel the world has lead me to some amazing places, and at other times, placed me in situations such as this. I manage to lift myself mentally out of the shitty train ride, and for a while, into a state of deep thought. I satisfy myself knowing that all the pain is worth it.
I think i might sidetrack a little bit here.
The more shit I see, the more I realize that there is an uncomprehendable amount of shit to see in the world. I spend so many long nights on busses, gazing out the window and thinking of plans of how i can see it all before my life is over. I know i can´t, but i can damnwell try. I become slightly angry at the fact that i can´t seem to motivate the majority of my friends to do what i´m doing, mostly for my own selfish reasons. I constantly meet groups of people who are travelling with their best friends, and i can´t help but think how much more fun this would be if i was in the company of my best friends, the ones who get my stupid humor, who could defend canada with me to loudmouth americans, and who could reminiss with me years down the road when all this travelling is but a distant memory to me.
That moment passes and I switch back to myself, and devise a plan to live nomadically for the rest of my life. I wonder how anyone can believe the fact that we´re just supposed to spend our entire lives working 9-5, always looking forward to the weekend, or our 3 weeks holidays, or our retirement. Before long, the monotonous weeks are going to turn into months and years that fly by before we finally come to realize that its time to retire, but we´re to old to do what i´m doing now. So I convince myself that I won´t let that happen, that I will never fall into that mold. But then I realize that at some point i want a family, and a place to call home, and I wonder how i´m going to make the two worlds possible. what the hell am i to do? I realistically can´t spend my life roaming around the world alone, sleeping in shit hostels and eating parasite contaminated food. But I´m determined not to live my life looking forward to the future as i believe so many people do. the train ride is begining to become tolarable, based on the fact that i am so glad i´m doing what i want now while i´m young and I will never be able to regret anything years down the road. Then asshole tries to recine his seat. again.
12am. Hour five.
My deep thoughts on life lead me into a light sleep, and I begin dreaming thoughts that are no longer within my control. Whatever i was dreaming about, it came to an end as the train came to a screaching halt. In the middle of absolutely nowhere, were three extra oil tanker cars, and apparently we were picking them up. So, we proceded to go back and forth allong the switchyard, slamming into the cars and re-aranging the order of the train´s contents. So much for sleep. I brush off the thin layer of dust that has accumulated all over my body, and think about how surely this delay was going to set us back timewise.
1am. Hour six.
Still playing with the order of the train. Ryan´s really getting frustrated now. There´s something about transport down here that gets under my skin when we´re not going anywhere. It doesn´t matter if the vehicle is moving 5kms/hr, at least its getting closer to the destination. But when we spend an hour and a half going nowhere, it really makes me mad. My clausterphobia was getting bad, and i began to consider the consequences of getting off the train and sleeping on the grass. naturally common sense kicked in and i thought that idea might not be so wise. Sometime after, we finally get moving, three cars heavier and consequently moving even slower. 6 more hours to go.
2am. Hour seven.
we come to a stop at some train station and the couple sitting in the seats in front of me leave the train. Instantly i get up and move my shit to their seats, so excited at the idea of having a seat with a window. I´m not even sitting there 2 minutes when two people board the train and claim that i´m in their seats. Before, Ryan would have given up the seats and returned to his seat beside the wall, but at this point, i wasn´t moving. Remember, Ryan doesn´t care about being curtious anymore. They yelled at me, i spoke a bunch of english saying i wanted the window, and eventually, they gave up. victory was mine. Calmed by the gentil breeze and two seats to myself, i was able to strech out and relax, and i finally drifted into another light sleep.
3am. Hour eight.
dreaming of rainbows and butterflies.
4am. Hour nine.
wake up briefly to change positions and gain feeing again in my legs that have fallen completely asleep and left me paralized from the waist down. Clean the dust off my arm, eat the one chocolate bar I was saving until absolutely necessary, and fall back asleep.
5am. Hour ten
Dreaming of Hockey and Froot Loops
6am. Hour eleven.
Its now eleven hours since I arrived at the train station, expecting a 9 hour journey. The sun has risen up against the prarie horizon, and the mountainous terrain i have become so accustomed to is long gone. I am excited at the prospect of arriving soon, as even with the late departure and delay picking up the extra cars, we should still be arriving within an hour or so. my stumach has begun to digest its lining, and my mouth is lacking any moisture whatsoever. The train passes by a few pastures of cows grazing and i come to a conclusion. At any given time in a pasture of 20 cows or more, its guaranteed that at least one of them is shitting. Check it out sometime for yourselves.
7am. Hour twelve.
we should be arriving by now, but all i see for miles and miles is nothing. I´m so hungry i contemplate eating the scraps of food i see on the floor of the train, but i´m not letting ´pete´ back into my body. with the daylight present, i decide to pull out the book i am reading, ´the Motorcycle Diaries´. Apperently this is quite well known, especially the movie, but i knew nothing about this. Esentially, its a journal written by a young Ché Guevara during his yearlong trip around south america, before he helped castro overthrow Cuba. I can´t help but notice a striking similarity and relation to myself in his writings and adventures, and wonder if i too am destined for greatness. Just a thought.
8am. Hour thirteen.
I must have missed the station in Santa Cruz and am now on my way to brazil. I struggle with this thought for quite some time, reasuring myself only by the fact that the rising sun is still on the right side of the train, meaning I am heading north (after Santa Cruz the train heads east). But the paraoid part of me still stews over this for quite some time and i begin getting wrestless. I can only sit for so long before i start to pluug out and a weird feeling just eats at me from the inside. I seriously contemplate throuwing myself and my bags out the window of the train and dealing with the consequences later. Ché would have done it. Perhaps I´m not quite as cool as Ché as i thought.
9am. Hour fourteen.
Oh good God are we still not there yet? I ask the guy beside me how long till santa cruz, almost hoping he tells me we passed it so i have an excuse to jump out the window. he says about one hour more. I don´t know if that was good news or bad, but i took it with the realization that i just needed to calm down and be patient. Us whities are always in a hurry and the locals don´t get why we can´t just chill out. My stumach acids have burned a tunnel through my intestines and have now peirced through the surface of my hip.
10am. Hour fifteen.
my anxiousness and stress become reduced when i once again enter a state of deep thought and reflection as we pass some rural villages on the outskirts of Santa Cruz.
I think another tangent is coming.
There´s something I´ve almost written about a few times on this trip but never found the right context in which to place it. Not that it really fits in anywhere but its something i think about a lot and I wanna write it down. Since I don´t keep a journal, this is my only means of remembering my thoughts, and well, my life is an open book so you can contemplate it too.
I suppose its kind of cliche and rhetorical, but it becomes real when you see it on a regular basis. Poverty. A big part of me feels guilty being down here, both because i have the opportunity to be and because of the circumstances with which i am. I´m on a trip funded mainly by our canadian government, and the unemployment insurance system we have in place to protect our citizens when they can´t work. Not that I don´t feel I deserve it because of the ordeal i went through in Thailand, but there are millions of people down here who suffer through much worse and don´t get a penny for it. Miners in Potosi that knowingly work in conditions that will end their career in ten years, shortly before they die of siicosis. They do so because they have no other option, and they need to feed their families; Families that are left with nothing when they die before the age of 40. Something is wrong with that.
I am constantly reminded of my thoughts as a child, when nothing was ever good enough for me. I remember Christmas as always being a competition with other kids, comparing the dollar value of what i recieved with my other friends. I always felt like i didn´t get enough, that other kids got more and that wasn´t fair. Not fair. That´s what i thought it was. Flashforward 10 years and I find myself sitting on a curb in peru, playing with a little child at midnight. Her mother is 20 feet away, selling a few goods on a blanket on the sidewalk trying to make enough to get by. The child is maybe two years of age, dressed in rags, covered in dirt, and playing with 4 plastic cups. plastic cups. As i stack them on top of each other she thinks its the most fascinating thing in the world, and laughs histerically when she knocks the pile over, as if this idea of stacking the cups has made them a completely new toy. I can´t help but feel ashamed at how greedy i was as a child.
But its not my fault. That is the society I was raised in. How was i to know what existed elsewhere on the planet. Sure we all hear of poverty, but as far as we´re all concerned, it doesn´t really exist. Down here, where i see it everyday, I can´t help but constantly struggle with the question of why. Why wasn´t I born into a bolivian family where i´m forced to shine shoes at the age of 6 when i should be off playing and being a kid?. Why don´t i spend my entire life sitting on a street corner selling bottled water and snacks? We´re too lucky back home, and I don´t think we realize it.
In the affluent western world, even the most incompetent indiot can make it through life relatively easy. If you happen to fall through the cracks, we have welfare systems and others to take care of you. We have no idea how easy we have it. Down here, you have nothing. Its different from asia too. In asia, even the poor people seemed to have a lust for life, and always seemed happy. Here, I don´t sense that. People seem sad, depresed and just generally very unsatisfied with their lives. I think that´s what is getting to me. I wanna help but i feel like there is just nothing i can do. I feel like i don´t deserve everything i´ve had handed to me in life and its just not fair. I keep using the word ´fair´ but its the only word that comes to mind. the fact that our affluence in the western world cannot exist without this kind of system in the third world just makes my guilt worse, and i struggle with what I´m supposed to do to make the guilt go away. I don´t think it ever will. Its ironic the amount of bitching i do about the ´rough times´ i have down here travelling and such, but in reality, its nothing compared to what these people go through on a day to day basis their entire life.
11am. hour sixteen.
The train has finally come upon the outskirts of santa cruz, and I am so excited that the trip is almost over. We pass by a lot of oil refineries, symbolic of the source of all the conflicts and problems in bolivia recently. After another half hour of chuggin along though the city, we finally reach the train station.
11:30am. Hour sixteen and a half.
time to get ripped off by a cab driver, get some food, some water, and some fucking sleep.
Once again, the Bolivian Transportation System is doing its best to test my patience. So, With 10 hours to kill in a dusty haphazard shithole on the Bolivia/Argentina Border, I have nothing else to do but pass the time doing what I do best: Writing about nothing.
some reason Canada isn´t quite so welcome. So, despite the fact that I like their country and want to spend a shitload of money within their borders, they make me go through a hell of an ordeal to cross the border and back. Completely useless if you ask me, since they have no problems letting me leave the country, spend a night 100 meters away, and then welcome me back in. So that´s exactly what i did, and now, thanks to my useless Lonely planet guidebook that lied to me telling me there was a morning bus to my next destination, i have 10 hours to kill untill my bus leaves. Thanks LP.
seriously can´t put it into words. The Five photos here in order of appearance are: Pink Flamingos chilling in a Laguna, The sun rising over the fire red Laguna Colorada, the famous wind eroded Rock Tree,
In between running and jumping around like an idiot trying to capture amazing photos, I just stared in amazement at the image of flat, baron expanses of salt for as far as the eye could see. Bolivia is really something. Many of you know how much I really love indonesia and plan on going back there one day, but bolivia is rapidly becoming competition for that Asian Archepelago.
Potosi, they were pretty discusting from all the shit in the air, and i had time to kill there waiting for a bus so they met their demise. 
