Sam "Stop the train" Lloyd

I have just fled from the poolside at an Argentinian hotel to avoid the absoutely appalling music pounding from the bar speakers. An example: a smitten vocalist states that his woman is "like you´ve never seen" but then is unable to actually describe her except to say "I´m trying to find words to describe her without being disrespectful". I mention this to establish that I am motivated to avoid hearing that music again and so may go on a bit here. Mel is still out there, looking like a a yacht-owning millionaire´s trophy wife in her $10 Giorgio Armani sunglasses, bought from some bloke in the street in Arequipa, Peru.

Early in my working life I was required to travel with a colleague to Geelong to do some work. We drove down but as I only had half a day of work to do it was arranged for me to catch a midday train back to Melbourne. We dawdled at the worksite too long, and eventually our contact (we´ll call him Paul*) and I had to rush to the station to catch the train. It was pulling out as we arrived and while I headed for the swiftly-passing rear carriages Paul sprinted along the platform and leapt off the end, waving to the driver to stop or slow down. He did and I scrambled into the absolute rear door and made it back to Melbourne to sit at a desk checking my e-mail and the weekend racing tips all afternoon. When Paul next called our office and I answered he addessed me as "Sam `Stop the train´ Lloyd".

I was reminded of this story as we travelled south from La Paz. We had booked a bus to Oruro, three to four hours south, where we were then booked on an infrequent train another seven or eight hours further south to Uyuni, the gateway to the extraordinary Salar de Uyuni. We were told that the train was much more comfortable than getting a bus the whole way, and anyway, who doesn´t like a train ride? The connections didn´t seem too tight but many a guide book and fellow traveller had warned us that Bolivian transport was a little unpredictable and there was a little frisson of anxiety as we boarded the bus in La Paz.

After a couple of hours on the highway the bus stopped. This wasn´t very unusual; all through Ecuador and Peru buses would suddenly stop for three or four minutes, in which nothing obvious occurred, and then continue on with whatever the problem was resolved. However, this time we didn´t start again and the driver´s assistant came back to make a speech in Spanish, from which we could only understand that whatever it was upset all the other passengers a great deal but there was nothing anyone could do about it. Ten minutes became twenty, then forty, and I was mentally preparing myself for the loss of the train ride and subsequent much later uncomfortable bus ride. I got cabin fever sitting in the bus and went out for...some fresh air, and could see a huge crowd of people about a kilometre ahead where the road crested. A Canadian businessman named Carl approached me and said some Spanish speakers sitting near him had told him it was a protest, and we assumed it was the local indigenous people, the Aymara, who apparently routinely used roadblocks as a form of protest against whetever fucking-over they were upset about at the time. Carl and I chatted for a while and tried to make each other feel better about how lovely an evening in Oruro would be when we noticed a sudden flurry of people back to buses. As we strode back to ours we could see a fleet of motorcycle police come over the hill to the north, back towards La Paz. From the bus windows we observed them hurtle by and soon we were moving (an angry arrogant Western part of me was hoping that some significant violence had been prepetrated on those that dared hold me up for an hour). The passengers were restless and each small cessation of movement as we cleared the protest area was greeted with cries of "Vamos maestro!" and others that we couldn´t comprehend. The road was covered in rocks and other debris and was being laboriously cleared by hand by the cops.

We were away, and by some calculations might still make the train. As 3:30 (the train departure time) approached I was imagining Paul and more hurdling of platform barriers, and a tall lady approached us from the back of the bus. "I live in Oruro and can speak Spanish. Are you catching the train as well?" she asked. "Yes" we replied, and looked up at her with hope and gratitude and admiration in our eyes. "It´s already left" she said, crushing us momentarily. However! The train was slow, she said, and she had overheard a local man´s plan to catch a taxi in Oruro and speed to Poopo**, the next stop, and catch the train there. We agreed to this, and in Oruro the tall lady brokered a taxi for Mel and I along with Carl and his colleague Jacques. The cabbie initially named an absurdly low price for the fifty kilometre drive, but after the tall lady explained further his face turned ashen and he seemed unable to negotiate further. He stammered something to her but his body language made it clear that he wasn´t up for the challenge. We transferred our bags to another cab, whose driver was clearly up for the challenge, his excessive excitement providing a poignant indicator of what life was like for an Oruro taxi driver.

We fanged out of town and for a moment thought we could see the train to the west but it disappeared behind a hill. Jacques spoke the best Spanish and was doing calculations with the driver: "So it´s 57 kms to Poopo and we left 20 minutes after the train which will take about 20 minutes longer than us to get there..." etc. I thought of the Sam "Stop the train" Lloyd story but thought it best to keep it to myself. Ahead I thought I could see it but dared not speak until I was sure. Then "Guys, what do you think that is on the right?". It was the train, gloriously slow and on the right side of Poopo. The driver´s excitement reached fever pitch, and he took his eyes off the road for about ten full seconds while an equally excited Jacques took his photo. We pulled in to the "station" (with no passenger platforms) with seconds to spare, paid the driver and shook his hand and leapt aboard, where we consumed numerous beers in the dining car in what was a pretty good result for the dining car´s balance sheet and everybody involved really. We watched Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson in a film originally made in English but dubbed into Spanish and then shown with English subtitles. It didn´t seem to suffer for it. To Uyuni!

* His real name
** Too easy