The Slow Trainbus to Cochabamba

Well, well, well! What a day of travelling yesterday was. It started with the piece de resistance - is it a bus? - is it a train? - well yes and no. It's a trainbus! 

Or more correctly a bus carriage (buscarillo) or a railbus (ferro bus). 

Aparently at some point Bolivia's railway system was sold to private investors, who promptly sold off most of the equipment to Peru - leaving just the tracks behind. And what could make more sense than to utilize these ready laid tracks, tunnels and railway bridges in some way. Therefore there exists between the little town of Aiquile and the bigger town of Cochabamba a railbus connection, which runs only 3 times a week and is _seriously_ off the charts for tourists. I hear about this innovative means of transport from my guesthouse hosts in Sucre. And once heard of, I of course had to try it out. It was also an alternative way of getting to my next destination Cochabamba, since the only other option would have been a night bus and after the last one, I'm not too keen on them.

 

So after a day of kicking my heels in Aiquile and waiting for the railbus, I finally boarded yesterday morning. The railbus left at 8.00 and estimated time of arrival in Cochabamba was 16.00. I had a couple of nice discussions with the locals, rendered especially challenging, because I think half the words they used were in Quetchua - language of the Incas and still the main language in the countryside in this part of Bolivia. (In fact I speak more Spanish, than most of the local farmers). In the background of this linguistic struggle were glorious views all the way! Doesn't sound too bad, right?

However, after four entertaining hours of local farmers popping on and off the bus any which where and some rather smashing views, it started to drizzle. Now whoever first said "a little rain never hurt anyone" clearly has never been in a railbus. Up until this point I had been sitting in my comfy bus seat watching the driver behind his steering wheel (!! yes, there is one!) and trying to get over the wrongness of sitting in a bus and crossing railway bridges and plunging into railway tunnels.  

 

However, not long after the first tentative splashes of rain things started to unravel. It turns out there is one major drawback to the concept of railbus; it's way lighter than a train and when the tracks turn slick from the rain, there simply isn't enough friction to move the damn thing forwards.

After nearly giving the engine heart attack the driver and bus boy finally faced the facts and picked up the tools of their trade: shovels. The thing to do is sprinkle sand or dirt on the tracks to give more friction. And not just in just the one sport you are stuck in, but about 50 meters onwards as well to gather up speed. Well, I say gather up speed and I mean that in the loosest possible sense - as the opposite of totally stuck. However for long stretches we would be shaking along in top gear with the engine blasting exhaust fumes to achieve  a speed of something between 2-3 kilometres an hour. That is until we were stuck again. And again. And again. For variety the driver and bus boy sometimes picked up their shovels to clear the tracks of stones from minor rock slides caused by the rain. It became increasingly clear that we would not be in Cochabamba at four. 

Thankfully we finally shuddered our way from under the rain cloud, after which progress was smooth and relatively uneventful. Finally our railbus came to a stop nearly two hours late in a small town 30km before Cochabamba and the driver informed us that this is as far as he's going today. He was already clocking overtime and wet from shoveling in the rain so I think he simply wasn't in the mood to go any further. A couple of local buses and one traffic jam later (a carnival with linedancing in the main road rather slowed things down) I finally arrived here in Cochabamba.

Despite everything the railbus still gets the thumbs up from me. As long as one's not in a hurry and has a strong bladder (no toilets for the 10 hours it took). The views were oooooh and the sountrack to our journey was the yipping of territorial dogs, who considered it a point of honour to chase this monstrosity off their turf. Also of our horn blowing to chase away afore mentioned dogs as well as an occasional cow, sheep, farmer and such. Oh, and the horn sounded like a train horn, which I thought was rather a nice touch.