Gringo Trail

Written at the end of our first day of “busing” ... We did some long distance busing back in Mexico with the kids a “few” years ago and as far as we can tell nothing much has changed. So far, only “semi-cama” is available (which gives us some extra leg room) but no first class. The movies are all the same, lots of sex and violence first thing in the morning and no toilet paper in the wash room. (One week later I am able to look back and laugh at this entry!) Boy how your expectations can change in a hurry. We have now completed our second bus trip - 15 hours from Unuyi to La Paz (was scheduled to take 11 hrs) on a “first class” Bolivian bus – not only is there no leg room (apparently Bolivians are considerably shorter than Canadians) and forget the toilet paper, there isn’t even a toilet!! “Banos natural” explained the bus driver….. That meant that Andrea crouched beside the bus in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night while the driver and “assistants” tried to figure out how to get unstuck from the river that we were trying to ford. And we really had nothing to complain about, as another company that did the same run, that left 1 hour before us, arrived in La Paz 4 hours after us and the passengers all had to get out and help push the bus when it got stuck trying to ford the river…

So far, it would seem that everyone reads the same guidebooks, takes the same buses, stays at the same hotels/hostels and sees the same sights. Being relatively new to the “Gringo Trail” we initially decided that we had better play it safe and stick to the recommendations in the guidebooks, after completing our first “tour” – a 3 day excursion through Southern Bolivia’s desert and Salt Flats, we now know that all tours are essentially the same so we should just look for the cheapest operator! Lesson learned – and I expect that there will be a few more of those along the way.

We should actually modify the heading of this entry to “The Gringo Youth Trail” to be more representative of our fellow travelers. It just doesn’t seem like that long ago the we were the “young one’s” of the group and now at the ripe old ages of 49 and 50 (Ian’s 50), 90+ % of the time we have at least 20 years on every other foreigner that we see. The other interesting and less depressing observation that we have made is that most of our fellow travelers are at some stage of a 3 month to 1 year trip. I honestly don’t know how they can afford it, but good for them…

The main thing is that if you are not careful, you will stick too much with the guidebook like every other gringo. We already find that there is a "well trodden" trail from site to site, hostel to hostel, and even bus to bus full of people from Europe (and no 'locals")... We will do our best to stay off this trail...