A true travel experience....

So last night we had to catch our night bus to Sucre....
We learnt some valuable lessons such as the worst seat with a good company is better than the best seat with a bad company. That morning we had tried to find a bus and the company we knew was decent didn´t have a semi cama or cama bus heading to Sucre (they are the different levels of luxury, usually each level gives more recline plus a on board toilet), and a normal bus means no recline which is a hard bus to sleep on. So we wandered around and found another company heading to Sucre that offered a semi cama bus, we decided that was a better option....
So we rocked on up last night at 8pm and checked in our luggage and watched as they dragged and dumped our bags into a very old looking bus. We tried to remain positive until we had at least seen the inside. We sat around for 30mins waiting to board while local men in another bus shamelessly stuck their head out the window of their bus to get a good look at us. We got on the bus and found the layout was nothing like we had been promised, the TV was non-existant, although in their defence you could see the gap in the ceiling where a TV would have once hung. We tried out our seats and i panicked when i couldn´t get my seat to recline but it was just a bit jammed so with a bit of jiggling i manged to push it back. This introduced me to the first delightful surprise of a large lump digging into my lower back which i think could have been a broken spring. After checking with the other girls it seems this was a common feature of all the seats. Still we grinned and beared it and soon we were on the road.
After less than 20mins of driving we found ourselves stopping at a restaurant and a man announced there would be a 20min food stop. We found this a bit odd but we never neglect a toilet stop as there is no guarantee there will be another one. So after 20 minutes we were on our way again and i attempted to get some sleep. Bus sleeping has never been my forte and this bus was no exception so i spent the first hour willing myself to sleep. At this point i felt the first drip land on my pants. I tried to rearrange my position to avoid the dripping coming from the roof and laid out a plastic bag to protect my seat, however this was horribly uncomfortable and i was still getting wet. I could see the man in front of me was suffering from the same issue and he was attempting to work out where the water was coming from. After 10mins the dripping seemed to stop but the damage was done, my seat had developed a puddle and i was edging closer and closer to Katrina´s seat in my attempt to stay dry. After another 10mins suddenly i had a small waterfall directly over my head and from the sound of things the man behind me was also getting wet. The man behind decided to go see the driver about this and ended up sitting up with the driver as there were no spare seats. This was beyond what i could deal with and Claire pointed out that there is a small seat in the middle of the back row next to where she was sitting. I climbed over Katrina and tried out the new seat. It was dry but it had no backing, just a sloping hard and dripping wet wall. there were puddles on the ground so my socks were damp as were my pants and my hair. I used my neck pillow as padding for my back and to seperate me from the wet wall and attempted to get comfortable. It wasn´t too bad but it was impossible to sleep there because the angle of the seat caused me to slowly slide off if i leaned back. So i got out my MP3 player and a bag of chocolate almonds and attempted to kill time. Only 6hours til we were due to arrive in Sucre.
Claire being the lovely person she is offered to take a turn at sitting in the middle seat so after an hour or so we swapped places. We had a new issue then, we both badly needed to go to the toilet but we were in the middle of nowhere and had no idea if we were due to make a stop. After a while we got brave enough to go up to the drivers compartment and put together a sentence is spanish requesting a toilet stop. To which he cheerfully replied Si si si si! So reassured we went back to our seats and waited. and waited.. everytime we passed a petrol station or slowed to a stop we thought we were there then we would be disappointed as the bus started accelerating again. Finally after 15mins we stopped and the lights came on so we were able to go to the bathroom.
We headed off again and now having a proper seat i thought i had a chance at getting to sleep. However there were still 2 issues. 1. The road was incredibly windy and bumpy, the main road was cobblestone and very rocky stones at that, this caused us to feel constant jolts and the driver was forever braking, almost coming to a complete stop then making massively sharp turns or going over large potholes which caused us to be thrown all over the place. 2. The man who was sitting with the driver had decided to come back to his chair with a blanket to cover the wet seat. As i was´now sitting in Claire´s seat this man was sitting next to me and he was a big man. And he was a bastard, being big was no excuse to spread out over his seat and half of mine. he had spread his legs far apart so he was leaning right against me and the had his elbow right out pushing against my side. This left me no choice but to start agressively wriggling and elbowing him to gain some space. But he pretended not to notice so i was squashed right against the armrest. He made me furious plus i just felt so uncomfortable having a stranger leaning right against me. Miraculously i did manage to get about 2 hours sleep cos i woke up and claire informed me it was 5am. I gave her back her seat so she could get some sleep too and tried to fill in time listening to my MP3. She had similar issues with the large man but she managed elbow him hard enough for him to move an inch or 2.
Eventually it became light and i could see a town coming up in the distance. By 8am we had arrived in Sucre and i felt like absolute crap. So we have decided to fork out extra money to find the best bus company possible for our next big ride to Uyuni. Sucre is not to stunning town that Lonely planet described it as and our hostel was not the japanese style modern accomodation it promised.

We dumped our bags at our hostel we went out to find breakfast, i had fruit muesli and yogurt plus a cappuccino and by the time i had finished that i was feeling much better. We wanted to make the most of our time here so we went to arrange a horse riding trip for tomorrow but there are 5 of us and only 3 horses available. We considered quad biking but it was beyond our budget so we will just visit the dinosuar park tomorrow and then leave the next morning. Its hard to remain positive on days like these but we managed to have a few laughs about how ridiculous it all is and it has been nice to just sit around do very little, arrange for our washing to be done and have a nap.