The Potosi Silver Mines
The Potosi Silver Mines June 11th
Bolivia’s biggest tragedy has to be it’s long history of exploitation. The country is (was) full of natural resourced and had reaped none of the benefits due to the greed of more powerful nations. Potosi is pretty much lesson 101 in the sob story that is Bolivia’s history. This city houses the mine that once held the biggest supply of silver the world has ever seen. The Spanish cleaned out all of pure silver and left. Now freelance miners go into the mines daily and risk all to pick out bits and pieces of what’s leftover – lead, tin, zinc, and impure silver (they told us that pure silver appears blood red in the rocks and impure silver looks just like…silver.) Somewhere along the line, someone decided to bring tour groups into the mine to see the incredibly dangerous working conditions. We paid 80 bs ($11.50) and joined one of these ingenious tours.
To prepare us for the innards of the mines, our guides Juan and Choco Loco (not his real name, haha), both ex-miners, suited us up in hard hats complete with a light clipped on top, a set of waterproof pants and jacket, rubber boots, and a rucksack to hold our water and customary presents for the miners.
In our firemen getups at 8am.
Geared up, we headed to the miner’s market to buy said presents. Before we bought out gift of coca, juice, and gloves, Juan gave us a couple of demos. He pulled out a six-inch cylinder wrapped in paper and told us to guess what it was. It was TNT. He then pulled out a lighter and pretended to light it up cigar style, actually burning the paper at the end. He told us that the stick of TNT wasn’t dangerous, the charge, however, was. And he pulled out a thin two-inch metal tube. He said that it must be handled with extreme care (he went on to almost light it and throw it haphazardly in a bag before the lecture was over). After the nerve racking dynamite expo, Juan passed around a miner’s cigarette – a mix of weed, tobacco, and God knows what else. One poor guy decided to take one puff – he said one was more than enough. Juan’s next little show-and-tell object was El Ciebo, miner’s favorite drink that, oddly enough, shares its name with the best chocolate in Bolivia. This was not chocolate though – this was 96% alcohol. He passed around capfuls, insisting we try it. The proper way to drink it is to pour a couple drops on the ground as an offering to mother earth, then a few more drops for your friends, and then you down the rest. It was so dry that it lost all the feel of a liquid as soon as it touched your skin, and the only way you know that it went down was by the burn intense, immediate burn all the way down to your stomach.
Possibly the strangest breakfast I've ever had.
With the shot of rubbing alcohol in my system, it was time to head to the mines. Outside the hole in the mountain that was the entrance to the mine, Choco gave us two things to remember: “guarda” means “watch out” and “tido” means “run”. And in we went.
The descent into the mines.
At first it wasn’t so bad. Cold, dark, and muddy, but not bad. Choco brought the group to a halt about five minutes in, took my hand and told me to follow him. He brought me to a cracked ladder covered in a slimy grey film and told me to climb. From the ladder, I climbed on to a three-inch wide plank of wood that was laid across this giant hole. I some how got from there to this little inlet that lead to another tunnel filled with busy miners. My three-sizes-too-big boots and helmet that kept falling over my eyes made the climb just a little extra fun. I was left alone in this inlet, while Choco went back for the others one-by-one. When there were about four of us up there, a miner ran out, turned a valve and ran back out. A shrill scream and some type of gas came shooting out of this valve the miner had opened. We began to panic and quickly covered our already masked faces with our scarves. I had no idea what we were breathing. Turns out it was compressed air that the miners periodically release to keep the oxygen levels sustainable.
A miner cutting slits in a fuse to let him know how much time he has before he needs to "tido".
When everyone had climbed up, we ventured into the tunnel to see the miners hard at work drilling holes to stick dynamite in. I could barely see through all of the dust and couldn’t hear anything over the screaming compressed air. Camilla was panicking about the possibility of asbestos exposure and Nina was on the verge of an asthma attack. I tried to stay positive and look calm. When Choco motioned for us to leave, I was happy. We all climbed back down and stood in a huddle. Juan told everyone to turn off their headlamps and get ready for the dynamite. We stood in pitch black and counted 30 rumbling explosions go off just above our heads.
From there on, I felt less scared, but also less and less comfortable. The further into the mines we went, the hotter it got. By the end, we were sweating in our waterproofs that had become personal sauna suits in the 30 degree Celsius (about 87 F) heat. The warmer it got, the stickier the already scarce air became. In the beginning of the tour, it had felt as if I was breathing in nothing but dust and now it felt as though I was breathing in nothing at all.
We crawled through impossibly tight spaces and climbed up clearly dangerous shafts. We’d been using the walls for support and Georgia cut her hand on their rough surface. Just as she was rubbing the blood away with her filthy fingers, Choco told us to keep our hands away from our mouths because the walls are covered in arsenic. Georgia gave him a look and he quickly added that it only affects you if you ingest it orally. Not sure that’s true. He told us that when the miners need to refill their cheek-full of coca (the miners don’t bring any food into the mines, they only chew and suck on coca leaves while they’re down there), they’ll pee on their hands to get the arsenic off. He said that sometimes the miners get so faint from the conditions and lack of nourishment that parts of their body will go numb. When it gets that bad, they pee in their hats and drink it. Some how, that help’s their already unfortunate predicament.
The yellow on the ceiling is chemical residue from years of using dynamite in such a confined place.
In the two and a half hours we were in the mines, we climbed up one level and then back down. There are seventeen levels to the mines and each are 20m (60ft) apart. I don’t think I could have stood another ten minutes in there, to be honest, I don’t know how those men stay in there for 24 hours at a time. We ended the tour with a visit to El Tio – the Devil who lives in the mine. The Spanish needed a way to boost production in the mines, so they invented this evil-looking god and placed his statue throughout the mine. They told the miner’s that El Tio will eat them if they don’t work hard enough. The fear stuck, and even with the Spanish long gone, El Tio is still sitting on his post in the mines. (I just google-translated ‘El Tio’, it means ‘uncle’ – which is creepy in itself.) Choco told us that once the mines really start to get to a man, he begins to take El Tio way too seriously. Twice a year they have a day to give thanks to El Tio and each team of miners will sacrifice one-to-three llamas for him. One brave miner will take a bucket of llama blood, run into the mines, fling the blood on El Tio and run out. He said that they must be brae because they actually believe that El Tio will eat them if they don’t get out quick enough. Choco also told us that the government attempted to clean up the mines a few decades ago and underneath the statues of El Tio they found all sorts of llama and child carcasses and skeletons that had been given to the statue in exchange for prosperity.
The black on the walls is dried llama blood. They also give him offerings of coca, alcohol, and incense.
We turned our backs on the evil, unnerving face of El Tio and headed towards the light of day. In the five minutes following our emergence from the mine, wind and sun had never been more appreciated by anyone, I’m sure of it. Going in those mines was one of the most dangerous experiences of my life. I later heard that 23 tourists died in the mines last year from rockslides and collapsing ceilings. And Choco told me that, on average, only about 6 out 10 people make it through the whole tour without asking to be taken back outside. I really can’t understand how men will work from their preteens to their death in search of an obviously already exhausted resource. Our guides said it was their way of life and, to the miners, there is nothing outside of the mines.
Sucre.
Sucre. June 9th
We took yet another God-awful bus the other day. This time we got off in Sucre – the oldest “civilized” city in Bolivia and the second oldest in South America (after Lima, Peru). The Spanish founded the city when silver was discovered in the surrounding mountains of Potosi. Potosi’s weather and altitude were too miserable, so the Spanish stayed in Sucre while the Bolivian miners roughed it a three-day horse ride away. I don’t blame the Spanish for preferring Sucre’s temperament – it was just lovely in every way. The weather was like Southern California springtime and palm trees and flowers grow everywhere there is any room for them.
Aw, we love each other : )
The Spaniards didn’t waste Sucre’s nice disposition, either. They organized the entire city into perfect blocks, cobbled the streets, and lined them with clean, white casas. It’s actually nicknamed “The White City” because everything is white washed.
One of the lovely white churches of Sucre.
The dark browns, greens, greys and sky blue of everything else in the city contrasts perfectly with the white, giving the city a charming European feel. Aside from La Paz, Sucre might be my favorite city in Bolivia.
Chilling in the park with a puppy.
While the atmosphere was enough to keep me satisfied, there wasn’t much else to do in Sucre. It’s a very historical city and is known for its museums. Unfortunately, only one of the museums we’d planned on visiting was open. But it was a really great one – La Casa de la Libertad, or The National History Museum. It covered the colonization of Bolivia, the revolution and liberation from Spain, the forming of the government, and all of the wars and dictators in between.
The Square of the Museum
I pulled out a pen and jotted notes all over my left hand and arm. They’re a bit of a jumble and I think bullet points would get them out the most legibly. So here are some of the highlights of Bolivia’s history:
- As mentioned earlier, Sucre is the oldest city in Bolivia, and was divided into social classes. At the top of the ladder were those who were born in Spain and moved to Bolivia, next there were those of pure Spanish blood born in Bolivia, and then the mix of the two. The mix of Spain-born Spaniards and natives were next, then the Bolivian-born Spaniards and natives mix (cholitas) and then the natives were at the bottom of the spectrum.
- Cholitas began appearing around this time, adopting the full, pleated skirts that were in fashion in Spain at the time. Later on, the English also came to Bolivia. At this time, bowler hats were in style with the Englishmen. They offered the hats to the Bolivian men, but since the hats have absolutely no practical purpose (they don’t even shield the sun), the men passed the hats on to their wives – the cholitas who wore the hats as part of the fashion sense that they’ve kept today. The hats aren’t cheap, either; in fact, they’re worth so much that there are thieves that specifically specialize in stealing cholita hats. They’re called ‘comberos’.
- Though Sucre was one of the first cities in South America to seek freedom, their silver mines made them too valuable for the Spanish to give up without a fight. They didn’t get their independence until 1825.
- Juana Azurduy was a woman revolutionary who fought along side her family in the war against Spain. The war took her husband and sons and she was exiled to Argentina where she was eventually made a general in their revolution. When Bolivia was liberated, she returned home but died homeless and impoverished because, while a hero in two nations, she was still just a woman, and worse, a widow. Her ashes are now kept in the museum with the Bolivian and Argentinean flag draped over the chest.
- The country was named for Simone Bolivar – a general and, technically, Bolivia’s first President. He never actually governed, though, because he was busy fighting the Spanish in four other nations. I saw his portrait – he had some great eyebrows.
- Antonio Jose de Sucre was Bolivia’s first acting president.
- The fourth Bolivian president was only in office 4 days before being assassinated. This set the pattern and now the average term a president serves here is 2.2 years. Doesn’t sound too bad, but they are elected for life… Our tour guide told us that 13 of the 65 Bolivian presidents have been assassinated. That’s 20%.
- There was a civil war between La Paz and Sucre. La Paz won and Bolivia’s government moved here so we are the active capital, but Sucre is still the “technical” capital of Bolivia.
- Women and campesinos (“country dwellers”/peasants) weren’t considered citizens until 1956.
- There are two flags in Bolivia. The national one, which is red, yellow, and green. Red for the blood of the heroes. Yellow for the country’s mineral resources (silver, tin, zinc, lead, and maybe lithium before long). And green for its natural resources (coca, timber, natural gas). The other flag is the wiphala. It is the flag of the indigenous people. It is made up of 49 squares in various colors to represent the 49 different people groups. You used to rarely see it, but with the election of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, ex-coca farmer Evo Morales in 2006, the wiphala can now be seen flying all around Bolivia.
And that… is enough history.
Sucre also boasts ownership of the best saltenas in Bolivia. So before our 5pm bus to Potosi, Cami and I sampled a carne and a pollo Sucre saltena. While the crust was good, her carne was too olive-y and in my pollo I found a raison, an egg, and a chicken bone – three things that don’t belong in a good saltena de pollo. Looks like Sucre loses to La Paz again.
I don't have a picture of the saltenas yet, but these tasted better any how. And they were less than a dollar each : )
Some Bolivian Photos
Cami and I stole some photos off the apartment’s computer. They were for a photo essay of a previous Bolivian Express Issue, and they’re pretty good… I think they show Bolivia more clearly than some of my stories.
A Cholita. Technically speaking, they are the descendants of the Spanish and native South Americans back in the 18th century, and they wanted to distinguish themselves from the natives so they dressed like the Spanish women of the time, and for whatever reason, they never stopped dressing like that. But today, they mostly work as street vendors and, until recently, were the victim of discrimination and not allowed into universities. However, with the election of Bolivia's first indigenous President about 10 years ago - things have gotten better for the cholitas. And now they are mostly just known for how they dress (bowler hats, long full skirts, and bright, fringed shawls). And, I've been told that there are even Bolivian women who aren't technically cholitas (ethnically) but still choose to dress in the cholita fashion.
The People of Bolivia.
llama llama
Roadside.
An every day sight - riot popo.
El Tio - Devil/God of the Mines. They give him offerings of coca, alcohol, and llama blood.
A miner with a mouth full of coca leaves. They'll stay in the mines for 24 hours at a time on nothing but coca leaves and juice.
Bolivian sunset.
An old cholita.
La Paz Traffic....on a good day.
Have you ever heard a 'crosswalk' called a 'zebra crossing'? Well, here they have people in zebra suits that help direct traffic at the zebra crossings. They are super friendly and always wave at me on my way to Spanish.
The View from our "Penthouse". Never gets old. That mountain in the very back is illimani.
Straight down view from our 17th floor apartment window.
You can get fresh juice here for three bs for two glasses (50 cents). Suck it Jamba Juice.
(These were all taken by some guy named Szymon, fyi.)
A little note…
As I was writing out the Salar trip on Thursday, I kept misspelling words and just blanking and I thought – oh my…I’m incredibly tired. So I took a little break and worked out how much sleep I’d gotten in the last seven days.
Thurs night –> 1:30am - 8:30
Fri night –> 6:30am – 11:00
Sat night –> 6:30am - 11:00
Sun night –> awful bus sleep – maybe 2 hours worth
Mon night –> 11:30pm – 7
Tues night –> 1:00am – 4:45
Wed night –> more bus sleep – 2 hours-ish again
That’s 31 hours and 15 minutes of sleep in 7 days, less than 5 hours a night on average. Oh boy, a crash is coming!
Day Three of Three in the Salar
Day Three of Three in the Salar June 2nd
Remember that I went to bed at 1am nearly insane from sleep deprivation? Well, waking up three hours and 45 minutes later didn’t do anything for my health. Nonetheless, I was in the jeep at 5am, shivering form cold and exhaustion. Nina, Georgia and I were in a heap of limbs and coats in the back of the jeep. We all slipped in and out of sleep and consciousness as the driver pointed out lagoons and geysers in the darkness out our window. Eventually, the sun rose and we stopped at Laguna Verde. We grudgingly got out of the car and Abel gave us our final history lesson. He pointed to a mountain on the other side of the Lagoon and said that Incans used to kidnap Aymara virgins and drag them up the mountain. Instead of killing the, they’d leave them up there and the elements would kill them within two days. He said that there are mass amounts of bones all over the mountains.
Abel also told us that in 2009, NASA came up to this area to test their equipment and robots intended for Mars. The extremely high altitude (4,300m. Monument, CO = 2,243m) creates an environment with similar weather, terrain, temperature, and even oxygen levels to Mars. As we drove to our next stop, I stared out the window and I’m not sure if it was the whole ‘no sleep’ issue, the lack of oxygen making it to my brain, or if it really was just the landscape, but I felt as if I could be on another planet.
Pretty Mars-esque, right?
I snapped out of my unearthly mindset when I saw our pancake breakfast at 8am, though. I stuffed myself with thick, cold pancakes topped with Dulce de Leche (a caramel spread). From there we walked outside and down to the hot spring – what I’d been looking forward to since day one. We slipped out of our clothes (we had swim suits on underneath) and bolted from the freezing air to the steaming water. It was amazing. I felt grime and dust melt off my skin (hadn’t showered in about three days at this point). It really was beautiful. And it was so warm that even when we had to get out 20 minutes later, my whole body stayed perfectly warm as I put my filthy jeans and sweater back on in the cold. We got into the jeep feeling fantastic. No lie – we looked like crap, but we were warm and felt at least slightly cleaner.
Nina, Georgia, and I
After the springs, it was eight hours back to Uyuni. Our driver, bless him, loved his music loud. Unfortunately for us, his music was an exhibition in how awful the human voice can sound. Specifically, it was a live recording of a Spanish Christian concert. I heard so many hours of “Vieje Christo! Vieje Christo!” that it will never be funny. My Ipod battery some how lasted through the day and I got to listen to Elliot Smith on top of the howling “Halleluuuuuuujaaaaah”s as we bounced back to Uyuni.
We stopped a couple of times for lunch and bathrooms. We took one stop at a “Stone Valley” (a lot like Garden of the Gods) for a climb. Florent, the Frenchie, some how managed to climb 50ft on top of one of the rocks and began jumping down ten feet at a time. Insane.
After Stone Valley, we were home free to Uyuni. We ate some pasta and boarded our bus back to La Paz at 8pm. I was hoping this bus ride might be a little better – it wasn’t. It was more of the same, except this time our bus broke down and everyone had to pack up all their stuff and switch buses at 2am. We did make it home on Thursday morning, though. I had an amazing shower, washed my hair three times, and vegged out in the solarium until 10pm.
While exhausting – it was an amazing trip and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Day Two of Three in the Salar
Day Two of Three in the Salar June 1st
I was awoken at 7am and was amazed at how warm I’d stayed all night in my borrowed sleeping bag even in the 20 below air. We had a breakfast instant coffee and cold bread and headed to the jeeps.
This whole day was very stop and go. Our first break was in a little town in the middle of the nowhere we were in. This was around 9am and we were told this would be the last running water we’d see until out hostel at dinner. We were also told this would be the last store we’d see till we got back to Uyuni in two days time. With this news, everyone queued for the bathrooms and picked out various types of overpriced wine and beer for the freezing night ahead. I bought skittles.
Back on the road, we passed thought an archway in the middle of the desert. Four men dressed in dusty army getups were sitting on the ground, leaning on the base of the arch. As we drove up, one of the men got up, stopped our car and asked our driver something. Our driver told him no and we drove on. Twenty minutes later, we stopped 15km from the Chilean border to take pictures on a railroad track and stretch our legs. Abel told us that we had just passed a Bolivian Army Punishment Camp. When soldiers get into big trouble or try to desert their posts – they are dropped off at that archway with no food or water. From there, they fend for themselves and try to survive for the week or month they have been sentenced. Some don’t make it. So they had been asking our driver for water, I would have given them some. It’s pretty harsh.
And on that note – we all took pictures spelling out Chiguina, the area we were in, on the tracks.
C=Grace, H=Maryam and Georgia, I=me, G=Nina, U=Kate, I=Hans Philip, N=Florent, A=Holley and Albert
Fifteen minutes here, and it was back to the car. We drove 45 minutes and the terrain began to change from caked, flat, red dust to rocky, shrubby, beige dust. We pulled up to a collection of porous rocks and a view of a giant volcano with a small puff of white smoke pouring out of the top. Well, the rocks were made of lava from this volcano and were excellent tanning beds.
Tanning on lava!
They also made for great bathrooms since their odd shapes formed natural stalls. When we pulled up, I saw at least six gringos peeing behind boulders. (I guess they weren’t that great of stalls cause I got to see everything…lucky me.)
Next was lunch on the shore of the first of four lagoons we would be stopping at that day. Abel told us that the Aymara and Incas would wash in these lagoons and the borax (or boron? beryllium?) acted as a natural detergent and kept their hair nice and shiny. Between lagoon stops, I saw an emu and a bunch of floppy-eared llamas. We also saw a white guy in a makeshift turban on the side of the dirt path we were driving on. He flagged us down and told us that his tour’s jeep had broken down just over the hill. So we drove up and our driver somehow got their jeep running again.
Our last lagoon stop was the Laguna Colorada and it had a flock of flamingos standing in the middle of it. I didn’t even know there were flamingos in South America, much less the frozen deserts of Bolivia.
Nina and Georgia and those little pinkish dots in the background are flamingos!
It was gorgeous but the sun was going down and it was cold. So we headed to our new hostel. This one wasn’t made of salt, wasn’t as nice, and was much more cramped than our last hostel, but somehow that just made it cozier. The two Koreans and us four girls set up our stuff in our six-bedded room, and headed to the table some great spaghetti. One by one, bottles of wine appeared on the table as people disappeared to their beds. By 11, it was down to a blind drunk Abel, Florent and Hans Philip, Albert, Maryam, Holley and myself. The conversation slipped back into the jokes of the night before and, eventually, it was down to Maryam, Florent and I. Abel was around, but he kept falling asleep in the corner, waking up to dance for us, and then going back to sleep.
Another tour was staying at the hostel that night and when their numbers had dwindled down to the die-hard late-nighters, they came over to our table baring Uno. Around this time, Grace’s mother came out in search of cigarettes and company – or so we thought. A member of the other tour offered her a cigarette, and in response, the Korean mom spoke her first English word – “marijuana?” They told her it wasn’t weed and she shook her head no. She sat with the most deadpan expression on her face while the rest of us talked accents, ages, and travel recommendations until about 1am when I was nearly delirious with sleep deprivation.
As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out.
Day One of Three in the Salar.
Day One of Three in the Salar. May 31st
Day one is a Monday and the football match and awful bus trip was the Sunday. We took that awful bus to get to Uyuni, Bolivia because from there we began a three-day tour of the Salar – the Salt Flats.
Now that things have been slightly clarified, day one.
We got off that bus at 7am and it was freezing. In sleepless confusion, I listened to a guy at the bus station as he tried his hardest to convince me to book a tour with his company. With the promise of discounts, we went to The Andes Mountains Tours. It took us about an hour to get the price from 850 to 600bs (about $85). We loaded into a “jeep” – more a station wagon – and were on our way.
The man from the station was our guide and his name was Abel (aw-bell, not Cain and Abel), but he was in the other jeep. In our little funvee, we had the four of us girls and a Korean 20-something named Grace who recently moved to San Francisco to work on her English and Grace’s extremely Korean mother who didn’t even speak enough English to tell us her name. In the other car was the Frenchies – Florent and Hans Philip, Rita the Dutch lady, the nice but dumb as wood Aussie girls – Holley and Kate, and Albert – the incredibly friendly, outgoing know-it-all medical professor from Loma Linda, Cali. Twelve of us all together, plus two drivers, one cook and Abel.
Stop # 1 –> Train Cemetery
This is where they dumped the old trains from the late 1800s that used to transport minerals over the mountains. You can climb all over these rusted stream engines, which was a lot of fun for the fifteen minutes we spent there. This is also where we realized that Georgia had forgotten her camera battery. We only had Nina’s little camera between the four of us.
Stop #2 –> A little salt manufacturing town.
The salt “factory” was two dark rooms filled with various homemade filtering systems that came to its end with a woman sitting on the dirt floor next to a pile of “clean salt”, scooping it into plastic bags and sealing them over a propane fire. You could buy 50kg for 12bs ($1.75).
Stop #3 –> Salt Flats
Perfectly flat, semi-reflective, white. We took perspective photos here (see me in Maryam’s hand?), which work so well here because it’s so flat. We also ate lunch here – llama steak and quinoa. Pretty good, actually.
Stop #4 –> Fish Island
Also known as Incahuasi Island. It is an island of petrified coral in the surrounding sea of salt. From what I could understand from Abel – the indigenous people of Bolivia, the Aymara, ran from their enemies, the Incas, and hid out on this island thinking the Incas wouldn’t be able to stand the altitude and harsh desert conditions. At the top of the island, we saw where they made animal sacrifices to their sun and earth gods. The Incas used the exact same spot to sacrifice Aymarans when they caught up with them, though.
Cartwheels in front of Fish Island!
Stop #5 –> Sunset
We drove across a lake (the salt flats used to be a sea and in rainy season it becomes one again, but in winter, aka now, only a small part is still covered in water), and stopped on a little sand/salt bank. The sun and distant mountains mirrored perfectly off the water and the horizon lines blended into the sky. You couldn’t tell where land ended and sunset began.
Stop #6 –> Salt Hostel
After the sun went down, the temperature went further and further below zero. We arrived at our hostel around 6:30 and there was no heating. In fact, there was no electricity at all. The floors were bare salt and the walls, pillars and chairs were all made of salt blocks. It was very cool but not at all cozy.
I intended to go to bed early to make up for getting no sleep the night before, but after a dinner of salchipappa (sliced stir-fried hot dog on a bed of fries and topped with thin strips of seasoned onions) Abel insisted on telling us a few jokes and buying a bottle of wine to make them funny.
Ready?
A woman has a baby and is devastated by how ugly it is. One day she and her baby get on a bus and the bus driver says to her, “Oh my God! That is such an ugly baby!” The woman sits down and starts to cry as she says, “Oh my baby, why are you so ugly?” or something like that (direct Abel quote right there). A man gets on the bus and sits next to her. He asks her what’s wrong and she tells him what the driver said. The man gets angry and says the driver should know better. He tells her that she needs to go tell him off. “Go get him to apologize!” he said. “And while you do, I’ll watch after your monkey.”
Really Abel’s broken English delivery and excellent acting skills made the jokes. The wine helped, as well. By 11pm, the Frenchies, Rita, Albert, Maryam and I had heard some hilarious “green” (here that means dirty) jokes that became the foundation of the trip.
For the sake of the twins, more my parents….I’ll refrain from writing the mucho verde jokes. Brilliant, though.
