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So we wake up and mooch around in the pool and town during the day. Not really impressed with Santa Cruz we're looking forward to getting to La Paz. With our bus at 6 we leave at 5.15 and arrive with plenty of time. When we get there the guy that sold us the tickets is there and takes us over to another bus company. He buys a ticket from them at 120 bolivianos, making 30 off of each of us. I wasn't aware at the time we were sub contracting out bus tickets out but I guess that's the price you pay from not shopping around. We get thru to the platform and realise our bus isn't until 7, an hour and wait ain't that bad, the bad thing was it gave us time to watch all the s*** heap buses roll in which made us dread our bus. 7 rolled round and our bus wasn't actually that bad, no air con but spacious still. After about an hour on the bus I was out like a light, I woke up at about 3ish needing a piss, strolled to the back of the bus to find the toilet was locked. No worries I'll ask the co driver for the key... Knock knock...hola, key for the bano... No inglaise... Yeah I appreciate that but bano is spanish for toilet so use your initiative and give me the key for the locked toilet, BANO, BANO!... No inglaise... Dickhead! So it was then bottle time, I emptied the water bottle out the window, got him out and waited, and waited, and waited. There was something about trying to piss in a full bus with crying children in front of me that put me off. I ended up waiting till 5am till he stopped and i could have a piss! Soon as I was back on the bus I was out. We stopped a few times up until I woke up at about 10ish yo Dyson saying 'road block time'. As I cleared my eyes and moved the curtain to peer out the window I could see a traffic jam as far as the eye could see, total gridlock! The bus edged up about another 100 meters but then stopped and told everyone to get to the bus stop at the end of the road block on there own. When we followed off the bus the other people on the bus were jumping into the back of an old truck, uninvited, we followed. This truck took us all around the back roads to cut out part of the road block. I counted 23 people in the back, at one point the men had to jump out and push it up a hill, and 4000 feet above sea level that's not an easy job! So we end up being on this truck for about an hour before it finally drops us off, still within the road block though and we are told to walk the rest. We hand the guy 10 bolivianos (a pound) between us an get walking. About half hour walking and an English woman with a film crew stop us to get our opinion of the road block. We agree to do an interview in return for some help to the bus terminal. She didn't mention that she wanted the angle to be from us being pissed of as she assumed we'd walked the whole distance when in reality we were quite chuffed as we'd managed to get a lift most the way for 50p. The interview went terrible, it was so awkward obviously not giving her the answers she wanted. So in return, as I expected we got nothing apart from the explanation we have a two hour walk to the bus station. We walk for about an hour and a half, there are no other gringos or travellers and for the whole time we are getting stared at. The majority of lamp posts have hanged mannequins also which is never a good sign. As the road blocks are clearing up there is more traffic so we jump in a taxi to our hostel. The rides about 45 minutes before we arrive. First impressions are good and we dump our stuff and head out for some food. I get steak, egg, chips an rice for £1.25, don't ask about the quality, it does the job! We then go grab a beer in a bar an it puts me on my arse so we head back to the hostel and chill out for the remainder of the evening. Being a party hostel the drum and bass doesn't stop till the early hours, just what I need after a day like mine.
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