A JOURNEY IN BOLIVIA 1988
The lobivias did indeed grow not far from the house. Our guide was a boy of about twelve years old. He told us to wait, then he went looking for sulcos. He took off at an unbelievable speed. I followed him, but when I got to the ridge, he was already out of sight. After half an hour the boy came back to the taxi. He couldn't find any sulcos.
We went back to our alogamiento. Here we met a young Japanese teacher, who turned out to be called Suzuki. He told us in English that he had been with friends in Santa Cruz for a few weeks and now wanted to travel the country on his own for another week. He had made the journey from Santa Cruz to Sucre on the back of a truck. Here someone had asked him to show his passport. When he showed that he was immediately relieved of half of his money: $ 400. Luckily he had an old Nikkormat camera that he could sell and he looked at us hopefully. However, we were not yet inclined to expand our photo equipment.
We walked a bit around the market, which was not too busy that day, because it was Sunday. Yet it was amazing what was offered in terms of vegetables, drinks, cosmetics and even mini computers.
In the evening we met the Dutch tourist again, who had been to Potosi. It was very interesting according to her.
We had completed our botanical mission of this trip and there was still some time left. We decided to try and pay a lightning visit to Potosi for the last two days.
Monday, August 22nd
Early on we set out for "Hidalgo", who organized the trips to Potosi. However, this office turned out to be closed, but the cleaning lady explained to us that we would only be able to drive in the evening. So we had ourselves taken by taxi to the bus terminal and there we bought a ticket for the bus at half past nine without any problems. Our friend Suzuki was there too. He had a ticket for another bus, which was due to go at nine.
We got on the 9:30 bus, but discovered that other passengers had the same seat number as us. We were wrong: our bus didn't leave until ten o'clock or later and Suzuki also discovered that he would be traveling on this bus.
The journey was on an asphalt road for the first 20 km, where I even saw some traffic signs. Another group of schoolboys was admitted under the leadership of the oldest in the class. They managed to turn one of the benches up vertically. The
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