Bolivia: When the Road Runs Out of Freedom.
- 17 hours ago
- 12 min read
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” - Abraham Lincoln
Now we are talking !
After the relative ease of Brazil, Bolivia felt like the start of something more real. Grittier, poorer, more traditional and somehow more alive. We were back in Spanish-speaking South America, albeit with a different accent. The plan was simple enough. Cross the country, get to Sucre, visit the mines at Potosí, see whether the salt flats at Uyuni were safe to drive on, and then get ourselves to Peru.
Bolivia, as it turned out, had other ideas.
As we got deeper into the country, into its bowels really, the traditional dress became more common and the place felt much more authentic. The people also seemed much friendlier than many we had met since arriving in South America. They were amongst the poorest too. Is there a link there? I do not know, but you notice these things when you are passing through at lorry speed rather than tourist speed.
There is not a massive amount to see when arriving from Brazil, so it was back to long slogs across big distances.
At first, though, Bolivia was fun. We were making good progress, parking in off-road hidey holes and feeling like overlanding was back to being what it should be.
The Bolivian women and some men, wore traditional clothes when you got away from the main cities.
Our journey took us through an area where the Mennonites lived. They came from Europe with the offer of cheap farmland and the promise that they could run their own schools. There are about 150,000 Mennonites in Bolivia now, many around the Santa Cruz region, and they are easy to spot. Simple bib and braces, a strange cap that reminded me of Casey Jones from days gone by, horse-drawn buggies, and no interest in modern technology. They are Christians and they made quite a sight. It is one of those odd overlanding moments where you are in South America, but suddenly feel as if you have driven through a side door into another century.
We bypassed Santa Cruz and carried on. That was when we needed diesel and realised all was not right. The first fuel station did not have any. Nor did the next.
A quick check on Google told us there was political unrest, fuel shortages and road blockades across the country. At first that sounds like one of those vague warnings you read online and hope does not apply to you. It did. This was not a few bored men with branches across a road. Bolivia was in the middle of a national fight over fuel, prices, austerity and President Paz himself. Unions, miners, transport workers, rural groups and supporters of Evo Morales were involved, and some wanted President Paz gone altogether. The blockades were being used to choke the roads until the government listened. Unfortunately, the road west of Santa Cruz was the road we needed. We only had one real route to follow, so after a bit of searching and a two-hour wait, we managed to get diesel and set off.
It did not take long to hit the first blockade.
We were just west of Santa Cruz and were held there for around 36 hours. No information, no idea what was happening and limited Spanish. It was terrifying in a way I had not expected. Bad roads are one thing. Borders are irritating, paperwork is tedious, breakdowns are annoying. But being stopped by other people and simply not being allowed to move is different. Your plans are gone. Your choices are gone. You sit there and wait for someone else to decide what happens next.
Some of the blockades and one of many women drivers, cooking at the roadside.
When we eventually got going, we laughed about it. Strange, we said. What a talking point that would be at dinner. Then, about 30 kilometres further west, we hit the second blockade.
This time we were more relaxed to begin with, which only proves how quickly you can get used to the wrong thing. The problem was water. We had about 80 litres, which sounds like plenty until you realise it is only enough for drinking and cleaning your teeth if you are trying to make it last. It is not enough for cooking, washing dishes, washing ourselves and living properly for an unknown number of days. After day two at the second blockade we had not showered for several days and we were watching every cup we drank.
This was serious. We could always leave the truck and walk through the blockade to try to reach a town, but we did not want to. The truck is our home, but it is also big and shiny and full of valuables. Walking away from it felt like inviting trouble. It was shelter and liability all in one.
Eventually it dawned on us that the other lorry drivers must be getting water from somewhere. By then we were on nodding terms with a few of them and the odd “buenos días” was being exchanged. With a little chat, some pointing and Google Translate, a family in the village gave us water. Pure relief. It lifted our spirits immediately and even made a shower possible, albeit a very brief one.
The village was extremely basic. A few small shops, most with steel gates rather than glass fronts. You pointed at what you wanted and they passed it through the bars. After a while they usually opened the gates for us, as we were considered top customers. The houses were mostly mud with corrugated steel sheets on the roofs. It reminded us of parts of Africa: not because the places are the same, but because the poverty had that same stripped-back feel. Had we gone back to Africa? Not literally, obviously, but the comparison came into my head. Life measured in animals, food, family and weather rather than screens, gadgets and things you do not really need.
The relief at getting water and the gated shops.
The local children came to look at the truck, so we gave them chocolate and pencils and paper to draw with. One girl told us she had just killed a cow with her dad. Another said her family had four pigs. A boy told us his family had eight cats in Santa Cruz. That was their world. Very little food, no TV, no computers, a few basic toys and a lot of dust.
For the kids, the blockade made an interesting diversion from their normal lives and having paper and pencils to draw was something they seemed to enjoy.
Many of the truck drivers had small trucks with no beds. I have no idea how they coped for days on end. We at least had a bed, a kitchen, water when we could get it, and somewhere to hide from the sun and the boredom. They were trying to make a living and the rebels were stopping them. From what we could gather, the drivers were very much against the blockades. They just wanted to work.
As the blockade dragged on, we all developed a kind of camaraderie. Charlotte and I would go for walks past the lines of trucks to pass the time. Going outside was not really an issue because drivers were constantly walking around anyway. We walked a lot, read a lot and tried to sleep as much as possible. The days were long and the nights were longer.
One day we caused ourselves another problem. We had left a camera running in the cab and drained the truck batteries. A stupid mistake, but stupid mistakes are easier when you are tired, bored and half stressed for days on end. The lorry drivers rallied round, found jump leads, brought another truck in and got us going. That was the best of the situation: men who had every reason to be angry and fed up still helping two foreigners in their well-provisioned truck.
At one point, out of sheer boredom, some of the drivers went to a local school and used the playground to play football. By this stage everyone knew us and we were definitely part of the team, even if we were not much use to anyone.
Then the government announced a state of emergency.
Part of the team blocking the road in one location
That changed the mood. Until then, part of you still thinks the roadblock will clear at any moment. Someone will make a deal, someone will get bored, someone will decide enough is enough. But when a government declares a state of emergency, you realise you are not stuck in a local argument. You are sitting in the middle of a national crisis. Roads were blocked across the country, supplies were being cut off, and the government was preparing to use the police and military to clear them. That may sound reassuring from a safe distance. When you are on the road, trapped between groups of angry men and a government trying to reassert control, it does not feel reassuring at all.
We were blocked, released, blocked again and allowed to move only a few kilometres at a time. The frustration was intense. It messes with your head because you keep thinking the next bit will be the end of it, then another group of men with stones, sticks or vehicles proves that it is not.
Charlotte was calm, as always. No emotion and no obvious sign of stress. That is her way. I used to think she was simply less worried than me in these situations. Now I am not so sure.
I ran through all the worst-case scenarios in my head. Would the rebels attack us? Would they decide the truck was valuable collateral? Would they get more desperate the longer the blockade went on? We were a very obvious target: foreign, visible, carrying fuel, money, equipment and probably more comfort than most of them had. That is not paranoia when you are sat at a roadblock with no idea who is in charge.
We were held captive until day ten. Then the breakthrough came.
A lorry driver came to our truck and told us to drive to the front of the queue because we would be allowed to pass. We did as instructed. One of the rebels said he would seek permission and let us know. Several hours later he came back and told us to follow him and his mob along the blocked road.
It was coming on dusk by then, and yes, I was scared.
We were being led by a group of rebels into an area with no people, no witnesses and no phone signal. Charlotte sat there calmly. I am not sure whether, after a life in the beauty industry, she saw the danger in the same way I did, or whether she saw it perfectly well and simply chose not to show it. Either way, she gave nothing away.
The foot soldiers looked totally indigenous, carried large sticks and had clearly been living rough for a long time. They smelt bad, which is not an insult so much as a fact after days on a road in heat and dust. In that moment, rightly or wrongly, all I could see was a group of men with little education, no social values that made sense to me there, no obvious regard for our lives, no phone signal, no witnesses and no reason that I could understand to care what happened to us. That made it scarier. Fear does not make you generous in your thinking.
As it happened, for people wielding machetes they were quite polite and said they would let us pass, but we still had two more blocks to get through before the first major town.
We passed the rest of the roadblocks with relative ease. Always held for a few hours, always waiting for someone to make a decision, and then eventually being waved on.
In total, we were held for 13 days.
The traditional dress was fascinating.
I have never been in prison, but I now have a very faint idea of why it must be such a terrible experience. Not the bars, because we had no bars. Not even the discomfort, because we had the truck. It was the loss of control. Your civil rights are denied to you and you feel violated in some way. Overlanding is supposed to be freedom. You carry your own fuel, your own water, your own bed and your own decisions. In Bolivia, for 13 days, we carried all that and still could not move.
Eventually we reached Sucre, the first destination we had wanted to get to, and found a makeshift campsite in someone’s backyard. It was scruffy, but it had electricity, so we did not have to run our generator, and it had water. Perfect. At that stage, perfect did not need to be very perfect.
The owner was a wise guy and told us he could get diesel on the black market. I could have kissed him. This meant we could push on to our furthest destination, Uyuni. We bought 230 litres, filled the tank and stored the surplus for the future. The containers went on the rear lift that holds the motorbike, covered with a tarpaulin. Diesel was scarce and we did not want to attract some passing opportunist thief. After 13 days of being stuck, the thought of losing fuel was almost too much to bear.
From Sucre it was on to Potosí to visit a silver and zinc mine.
We were taken underground and walked the roadways. The miners still fill rail tubs with ore by hand and push them out of the mine by hand. They work in pairs and get paid around £2.50 each per tub. It is terrible work. Many die from roof collapses and gas. Women are employed at the mines, but they are not allowed to work underground because they are thought to bring bad luck.
Just in mines?
I was a coal miner in my formative years, so this really resonated with me. I understood what was happening down there in a way most tourists probably do not. The miners drill the rock using compressed air drills, pack the holes with dynamite and blow the rock face so they have mineral to collect. Hard, dangerous, physical work.
We observed these guys and could understand their frustration at the low pay, but was that justification for holding up thousands of lorry drivers and causing mass food shortgaes throughout the country? I have my opinion.
When I told our guide I had been a coal miner, she took us deeper into the mine than she usually took people. She said she respected me for having done that job. I appreciated that. It is not often you go on a tourist trip and find yourself back in something that feels uncomfortably close to your own past.
She was also very political and spent more time berating President Paz than telling us about the mine. At the end, she asked if we wanted to donate anything to help the miners.
I paused before answering.
“The miners are some of the people manning the blockades around Bolivia,” I said. “I spent 13 days being detained at these roadblocks. I think I have given enough.”
That may not be the answer she wanted, but it was the answer I had.
Our final destination in Bolivia was the salt flats at Uyuni. When we arrived, we felt relieved. We were only about 200 kilometres from the Chilean border and nearly free. There was a fuel station and, miraculously, they had fuel. There was also a huge queue. We probably did not need the diesel, but after Bolivia you do not drive past fuel because you think you are all right. Better to be safe.
We queued for six hours.
Finally we pulled onto the forecourt, only to be told the last truck leaving had taken the last of the diesel.
I wanted to cry.
We drove to the salt flats, but they were wet and did not look safe to drive on, and so we said, no thank you. I know people go there for the photographs and the endless white horizon, but I was in no mood to turn a bad fortnight into a rescue operation.
So we went straight to the border.
It was closed.
Bolivia’s final sting in the tail.
We had to spend the night at the border at 4,000 metres. The temperature was heading towards freezing and the big issue now was whether the truck would start in the morning at that altitude and in that cold. After fuel shortages, blockades, water worries, black-market diesel, wet salt flats and 13 days of being told when we could and could not move, we were now parked at a closed border, staring at Chile and wondering whether the engine would play its part.
Did we make it?
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