Don't drink on a long drive

Friday April 25th

Today was another of our long truck journeys, this time from Unuyi to Potosi. When I say long, I do mean time, rather than distance. This was only a 180 km journey, yet it was scheduled to take us 8 hours. Still that was quite short, so because of that we acually left at the reasonable hour of nine. As usual we fell behind, this time mostly because of extra road works on the 'road', which if continued will mean that one day this may actually resemble a road. A lot of the time we were on river beds.

The truck journeys themsleves are fairly boring things. The scenery is OK, but generally quite similair to what went half an hour before, so we don't sit there looking out the window. Instead people play music, read, watch their MP4 players, play PSPs, or drink.

Yep, we have fallen into a slight habit of beginning drinking when it looks like we are an hour or so away from the destination. But today all we had was a local vodka, which tasted rank. I still drank at least a 1/4 of the bottle. All would have been fine, except the bus then took one diversion too many, and broke a spring. Everyone got out, and a few people used the opportunity to take a leak. I was confident that we were only half an hour from the end and I would be able to hold off.

OK, you all guessed whats coming next, having to get the truck to make an emergeny stop so I could take a pee. All I can say in my defense is that the rest of the gits on the truck did start talking about the NASA lady who drove from Texas to Florida using a nappy, specifically to make me need to go. I will have revenge.

Despite all that I was still able to go out for a nice meal when we got to Potosi, and have a few more beers (unlike some others). This is the highest altitude we sleep at on this trip, 4050 meters, and despite the warnings about drinking at altitude, I have been drinking enough water to ensure so far no hangovers.