The Bible ( Lonely Planet guide ) was consulted, and a time and route were planned. We even bought our train tickets from La Paz office ( had we actually looked at them things might have been different ) and scouted the route to the bus terminal for the morning. So Monday morning rolled around, we checked out of Loki and headed off to the bus terminal. Jumped the 8am bus for the 3 hour trip to Oruro, which in fact took 4, it took us an hour to get out of La Paz.
Everything was looking great, have a spot of lunch at the best place we could find and then amble on down to the train station and wait. We got back to the train station at about 14.00, got a nice seat in the sun and waited for the other passengers to arrive.
No one did.... But that isn't a problem over here, because they were still letting people get on the 8 am bus at 830. Eventually at 15.00 we dragged out our train tickets to have a look at them. One number immediately struck us as odd. 17.
17th in fact. 17th, no that can't be right. We are going on Monday the 16th. The Bible said that the trains ran on Mondays and Fridays only. So I checked THE WATCH........ 16th it said. Ok so I mustn't have changed the date when we crossed the date line. Jo got out her phone........ Monday the 16th....... did she change hers?
Ok something is a bit funny here. We looked up on the big white poster size board where the train times are, Martes 15.30. Ok no problem there. .......
What does Martes actually mean? Right so you probably know more Spanish than us two, because you will have correctly worked out by now that Martes does in fact mean Tuesday. Another hint could be that Monday is Lunes, Monday, Moon-day, Lunes. I see no bloody connection. I mean its not rocket surgery, and neither Jo nor I are in fact and never will be rocket surgeons.
At the train station.
So ooppss. Out came the Bible, yep it says Monday and Friday trains only.
I'm not trying to point the finger anywhere here..... but it is all Jo's fault. Either that or the town planners got together and worked out a nifty way to get travellers to spend a bit of time in this town. I can just see them sitting around their council table, after having a siesta from 11am to 4pm. ' All those in favour of shifting the train time table one day say si' , the roof collapses from all the shouting and they all go home for the day knowing that they have done a good job ......
Ok so we were stuck in Oruro. No problem, we can make this work. There's not much to do here , yep kind of reminded me of Nazca. By the time we checked into the hostel had a bite to eat and beat Jo at some cards, about time too, I teach her a game and she flogs me for a month. It was time turn in.
We had a walk around town in the morning, but I wasn't sure if the town got going or stopped around this time, it was almost impossible to tell. Checkout was at noon, and after this we just went to the station to wait for our train....... again. This time we saw people gathering from about 1.30, so we felt like this would be the correct day.
Probably the most interesting thing I can say about Oruro, is that it is a palindrome.
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