"gracias Evo por la carretera"

The main point of travelling most of South America by land is what i would see in the process, but after the hitchike to Chile and back down toward southern Bolivia, the political unrest made it so that buses could only travel by night, and they have to take narrow back roads through cliffs because the main roads (slightly wider roads through cliffs) are blocked by rock and dirt barracades and protesters. A large part of southern bolivia wants to cecede from rest of the country, so there are always roads blocks of every kind preventing tucks from coming in and out. During the supposedly fourteen hour bus ride from Oruro to Tarija, I was woken up half an hour into the ride by the bus driver yelling for everyone to get off the bus, so when i stood up, I realized that the bus was tipped at an angle, over a cliff and out the window was the straight fall down.
The bus had attempted to speed over one of the rock road blocks, but one side of the wheels got stuck and the part of the road that was left was too narrow for the other side. Immediately all the man started to shovel out rocks from the road block while they threw rocks at the people who were making them, although not to hurt them, because everyone supports the protests, just not when they have to experience it on the bus. In the meantime, i was pushed to the large bundled group of women and children (don't get me wrong, it was nice to have a break from the Jean Claude Van Dam marathons they play on the bus televisions for the entire trip), while they kept warm by complaining that the men weren't doing anything. Eventually the bus made it, and the next 14-20 hours were spent in and out of sleep, rounding the edges of unstable cliffs, and Jean Claude Van Dam.