Epic Fail!!!!!

So we tried to leave this morning for Peregira Pampa. Tried being the operative word, as clearly we failed, and I am still in a location with running water, electricity and internet.

We arranged yesterday afternoon to travel to Peregira Pampa with the teachers of the school. They were leaving this morning at six, from an address I believed to be 739 calle colcechaca. So yesterday, we spent the afternoon running around furiously trying to find all the food we would need for our stay. This was challenging as Potosi is pretty dead on Sunday afternoons, with only a few vendors scattered here and there. Naturally, grocery stores are unheard of. However, we succeeded and were all ready to go.

So we woke up this morning at five, had our breakfast, and called a cab. Everything was going splendidly. The taxi arrived at 5:30, giving us plenty of time to get to the teacher´s house. Or so we thought;
Problem no.1 - the roads in Bolivia are one way only, and the one way you can leave from our hostel turns onto another one way street. However, this one way street is under serious construction, and therefore cannot be used. The other road that one could turn onto had a huge truck parked in the entrance to it, making it impossible to access. Bravely, our taxi driver decided to chance the road that was under construction. This did not end well. After several huge potholes that physically raised the bottom of the car under our feet, we arrived at a huge pile of dirt, making it necessary to drive backwards all the way back down the street because they are too narrow to change directions on. Of course, driving backwards is rather challenging and so we ran into several piles of bricks, and our taxi driver would regularly hop out and investigate the road before continuing. Hi-freaking-larious!

Problem no. 2- So after about 20 minutes wasted, and a whole lot of illegal driving, we finally got turned around. Within minutes we were at the street we were supposed to be at. Unfortunately no. 739 was non-existent. The road ended somewhere around 550. Oops! And seeing as how I had lost my SECOND cell phone several days before, I had no way of calling to verify the street name or number. By this point it was approximately 6:05. Our taxi driver, believing reality to be playing tricks on him, decided it was necessary to drive the street three times just to make sure no. 739 was not going to appear. Personally, I think he has read too much Harry Potter, and was hoping for an event similar to that of the room of requirement. This was despite our vociferous protestations that we needed to find a public phone, and pronto!

Problem no. 3- Finally, realizing that driving back and forth was futile, he set off to search for a public phone for us to use. So far our history with pay phones is dismal. We can never quite get them to operate in the way they are supposed to- money gets stuck before it falls into the proper location, area codes are not actually what they claim they are, etc. However, today´s pay phone takes the cake! It must have been from the 1930´s, maybe the 1940´s- it was bright red, and was one of those phones where you have to twist the big circle thing and then it does the clicky thing. I did not even know which direction to turn the dial, which led to general hysterics while trying to dial the number. Our problems were then further compounded by the fact that the peso´s back in the day were smaller than the peso´s now-a-days, and so our money did not fit. We substituted with 2 50cents, hoping that would work. It did not. Fail number 645 of this trip.

Problem no. 4- We then decided it might just be easiest to go back to our hostel and use the phone there. Unfortunately, the phone there cannot be used to call cell phones. Most land lines in Bolivia cannot be used to call cells, which I did not realize until today. Yet another reason to invest in another cell phone. Luckily Johnny let us borrow his cell phone. After calling the same number I called yesterday and discovering it was out of service, we tried a second number we had for the teachers, only to discover that they had left without us! Spectacular, Spectacular!

By this point, Emily and I were just about dying of laughter, and decided we needed to calm down. So at 6:30 this morning, we had a hot toddy with mint liquor that Emily had bought from the nuns at the monastery in Potosi (yes, you did read that correctly...nuns). Toddy is a chocolate powder similar to milo that we discovered is quite good with a bit of mint flavouring.

I also learned this morning, that in light of the upcoming Bolivian election, the miners are planning a protest for tomorrow or wednesday that might in fact close all roads into and out of Potosi. Spectacular, non? At this point, we are not sure what we are going to do. Felipe is quite busy at the moment in Sucre, meaning he might not be able to drive us out, and frankly I have no desire to get stuck in Peregira Pampa for an indeterminate time with only four days worth of food. So we are at an impasse...