Planes aren't flying
Trip Start
Mar 09, 2007
1
142
169
Trip End
??? ??, 2008
La Paz,
Bolivia
Friday, January 25, 2008
Flights canceled and not wanting to take a hefty slow bus back to La Paz (for safety and now time reasons), we gathered a group of 8 people and got a jeep ride back to La Paz. This is what people resort to when they are in a time crunch and were relying on planes flying and getting them back in time. They use Toyota Land Cruisers for this, pop seats in the trunk and put the baggage on the roof. We figured this was a much safer option than the bus since its smaller, weights a lot less, and is faster. It's more expensive than a bus ride, but cheaper than the plane. The jeep ride runs 350 USD total, and you split that between however many people you can get. It was Jeremy, Emilie, the three Irish, two Germans we met on the street, and me. We left shortly after noon and it was supposed to take 12 hours, putting us in La Paz at mid-night.
Our driver was driving this Toyota almost like a rally car. We were flying and bouncing all over the bumpy road. Around 3pm there was a 'PING' sound that came from the car and our driver pulled to a stop. Ran up the road and came back with two pieces of metal. He looked under the back of the car and saw the problem. Of our 7 layer suspension on the back right side (its that type of suspension that is made up of long pieces of metal put on top of each other or layered if you will), we had just shattered through 5 of the layers, two of the layers breaking free and falling to the ground. We drove slowly to the next town where he asked for a welding machine. He found one, backed the car up, jacked it up, took the whole back right suspension off, took each of the 5 broken layers and welded each one back together one-by-one, and then put the whole thing back together. Took him three hours. I couldn't believe how well versed our driver was, I was highly impressed with how exact he did everything. Here are some pics from the whole thing:
http://chuckonearth.smugmug.com/gallery/4265214#P-2-12
We hopped back in the car and drove on. The interesting part was seeing all the crazy road drop-offs that I had missed because I was sitting on the wrong side of the bus on the ride into Rurrenabaque.
Although we were supposed to be in by midnight, the 3 hour repair job, and then shitty roads put us back a total of 5.5 hours, we got in at 5:30am. Jeremy's flight was at 8am. So we got out of the jeep in La Paz and got right into a taxi for the airport. Poor Jeremy had to fly all day back up to NYC without a break, a rest in a bed or a shower. Good thing he has two days to chill out at home before heading to work.
