hobo | Tiara in Transit

Everything’s going to be ok… until it isn’t. Part 3 – Odin & Tiara’s comedy of misadventure.

This had become our mantra.

Odin, looking delirious and dishevelled at 6am in the morning, repeats – ‘Everything’s going to be ok’ as his stomach churns and makes awfully loud moaning noises, obviously complaining about the service station hot dog he had consumed earlier.

T, wincing at own stomach cramps from bad service station chicken – ‘Yeah, everything’s ALWAYS going to be ok… Until it isn’t.’

Our bus had returned from re-fuelling and we continued forward on our journey towards Bonito chasing after all our luggage… And then the bus broke down, in the dark of night, in the middle of nowhere, and had been broken FOR 4 HOURS, when it was only a couple of hours away from Dourados where we were meant to catch the only twice a day connecting bus to Bonito.

We finally make it to the Dourados bus terminal at 9am that morning, having missed our 6am connecting bus by a long shot, and were fortunate enough to find a lady at the ticket office who spoke some English.

The nice lady informs us that the next bus to Bonito leaves at 4pm that afternoon.

T – ‘Odin, ask her if the bus will drop us off at either one of these destinations in Bonito that’s written on the post-it note?‘ referring to what we had assumed were the names of suburbs in the town of Bonito.

Odin to the lady – ‘Will the bus take us to here in Bonito?’ hands over the post-it note.

The lady reads the 2 names on the note and is confused –‘I’m sorry my English is not so good, and I do not understand … These are the names of bus companies.’

Odin & T – ‘aaah…’. Then giggling. ‘No wonder everyone looked angry and confused whenever we asked if this was where the bus was going!’

Luckily, even though we had been jumping on Brazilian buses demanding to be taken to a ‘bus company’, miraculously we were still on the right path to Bonito.

Lesson – Even when all the odds are against you, (it’s a foreign country, you don’t speak the language, you smell like a hobo and have lost all of your luggage, nobody understands you and you have to deal with your own naivety and arrogance) life will correct itself, and everything will always be ok.

Until it isn’t.

Where trains come to die.. – The train Cemetery

The Salt flats of Uyuni would have been an incredible location to watch the sunset in Bolivia. The reflective whites of the salt flats would have displayed a spectrum of colours from the suns rays beautifully. Colours of fiery reds, orange, and soft yellows that would have been highlighted by the fluorescent outlines of the dry salt cracks, a pattern that detailed the land.

So it was with much surprise and disappointment that I discovered we were going instead to the antique train cemetery for the sunset.

The train graveyard was a dump, I mean, a ‘well rusted playground’ decoratively littered with many pretty plastic bags which had fused with the native arid shrubbery. The word ‘FUN’ could be thrown into the description.. as long as you’ve had your tetanus shot.

Imagination is easily utilised in a place like this, with plenty of landscape inspired scenes to role play.

Scene 1 – Role play hungry homeless person looking through empty antique rusty cans for food.

Scene 2 – Stand around an empty tin drum an imagine there’s fire burning in it while you make-believe warming your hands against the cold, singing ‘Cause if there’s one thing she don’t need it’s another hungry mouth to feed, in the ghetto…’ (Elvis classic)

Scene 3 – Lay down on the tracks and wait for the pretend train to come.

Scene 4 – Give up, accept you’re in a rustic dump, in the cold, in the fierce wind, and go wait in the car for what felt like the longest sunset in the world. Also try to ignore the pain coming from overloaded bladder.

I did all 4 scenes and the god-damn sun still hadn’t set.

20 minutes later, the sun started its slow descent. Yes, it was pretty, but lacking compared to some amazing sunsets I’ve witnessed.

Lauren – ‘Come on Tiara, you might as well take one picture’

T, reluctantly gets out of the car and hands the camera to Andy – ‘ ok, Andy, do you mind taking the photo for us?’ then stands in front of sunset with Bec and Lauren

Lauren – ‘How should we pose?’