Theft and the worst bus ride yet!

After nearly eight weeks of travelling around South America it happened. My day bag was stolen. H, Jess, Charlie, Lizzie, Erica and I were waiting to board the night bus to Potosi, and I had put my bag down for a moment, under my backpack and next to the bottle of Cachacha H and I had managed to take with us since Florianópolis. It was next to the group and I left them for a few seconds, to confirm our tickets with the ticket office. When I got back it had gone. No-one saw it happen.

It is a terrible feeling, especially as it had my camera in there with all of my photos from the four day trip on there, as well as my hard drive which has all of our photos on there on this trip (luckily they are backed up on H´s iPOD which is now out of battery and cannot be charged because the leads and adaptors got taken as well). I also lost a spare pair of glasses, my sunglasses, washbag and contents and my DIARY. I have kept a diary since my first day at Uni so it is particularly gutting to have that taken from me, especially as it is no use to the tosspot who stole my bag.

After some frantic looking around it was obvious I would never see it again and H and I had to make a decison - stay in Uyuni or get on the bus with the girls to Sucre via Potosi (our backpacks had been tied to the roof by this point and the bus was about to pull away). We decided to board the bus. You can imagine how crap I felt at this point.

The bus was awful. We had to scramble through people already stood in the aisle and I had to kick some old fossil out of my seat. I had no sympathy at this point. And it got a whole lot worse without getting much better. We were crammed in there and H had stinking arm pits over her head. I spent ages going over and over what was in my bag and whether or not I needed to cancel anything. Luckily our passports, bank cards and flight tickets were in my money belt which I was wearing.

The bus ride was the worst we have done so far. The smell was terrible and the trip was along some of the scariest roads yet. I had a window seat and couldn't look out of the window at times, as we were that close to the edge of a very long drop off the side of a mountain. I was wedged in my seat with no leg room at all...the stinker in front had reclined and trapped me in.

We stopped occasionaly to drop people off, or to allow more people on, and that was an experience in itself. People pushed and shoved their way along the bus, and each time the driver put on these awful neon lights which woke us up from whatever sleep we were trying to get.

We eventually arrived in Potosi, the world´s highest city and about 2am. When the lights went on on the bus, and people began to get off, we became aware of the carnage on the bus, particularly in the aisle. Some kid had crapped under H´s seat (the buses here do not have toilets on them). It was not what we needed. After getting our bags we then had to work out the best way to get to Sucre. We had been told by tourist information in Uyuni that we could all get a taxi there (2 hours away) for cheap cheap but when we tried the drivers took us around the block and to a bus company that could take us there. There had been a huge misunderstanding and a bit of a stand off happened in the middle of this dark street. Me, five girls and two taxi drivers, plus a couple of randoms who had joined in. It wasn´t an ideal situation at that time in the morning. Anyway, it got sorted (thanks to Jess´s Spanish) and we eventually found ourselves on a bus going to Sucre. However we didn`t leave for another half hour or so as the driver decided to drive around Potosi, looking for anymore people to make the trip more worthwhile for him.

The bus ride was supposed to take two and half hours. It took three and a half. Why? Because the bloody thing broke down on a mountain pass, literally in the middle of sodding nowhere. Thankfully this bus didn´t have locals standing, sitting or shitting in the aisles. We had been driving down this track when there was this huge noise. It sounded like the gear box had fallen apart. We stopped and the driver and his mates got out. Somehow, in the pitch black, with torch lights and spanners, they managed to fix it, and we were on our way to Sucre. We arrived at about 7am, three hours later than expected. Luckily the reservations the six of us had in a hostel still stood, and after trekking for fifteen minutes up this road, we were relieved to check in and crash out.

It had been the toughest day of the trip so far. I knew I had to spend that day reporting the crime and it was bound to be painful. At least it was Charlie´s 23rd birthday though, so that would help to take our minds off what had happened.