Chulumani and mercifully back again

This is an part of an intro I wrote in November for a test piece for a guidebook:
After a bus trip of such awe-inspiring beauty and buttock-clenching danger it would leave Richard Dawkins reaching for Catholicism’s embrace, you arrive at Chulumani. While, the town’s architectural delights may not trouble UNESCO unduly, it is not without its charm.

HISTORY
The Spaniards founded the town in 1748, 33 years later it was the scene of battles between rebels and the Spanish army. Around this time, African slaves started to arrive, purchased by local landowners from the silver mines of Potosi. These Afro-Bolivian communities still exist in the area.
German Jews found refuge here from persecution in the 1930s and early ’40s. To mutual astonishment and disgust, notable German Nazis and chemists started arriving here in the mid 1940s escaping from international justice.
Boom time for the cocaleros hit the town in the 1980s with cocaine being openly sold in the Plaza Libertad as Colombian “businessmen” in helicopters flew overhead. Today, cocaleros are again in the pink with the price at record highs.

I didn’t get the job but it was an interesting trip. The owner of my hotel regaled me with stories of his past (New York gang fights, Woodstock, conversions to apocalyptic cults) and tales of the town (Nazi coke and gold, and naked drunken Nazis dancing in the street). Great stuff.
The drive back was terrifying. I had the last seat on the past-retirement-age bus, next to the driver and inches from the window screen. He started the journey with the sign of the cross and we were away down the dusty track. This was the first black bus driver I had seen since leaving London and as we careered through the hills it reminded me of the end of The Italian Job. If he had started playing the The Self-Preservation Society, I would have lost what little composure I had left.
As we flew around blind bends—he drinking orangeade, lighting fags, picking his nose, beeping the horn and making the sign of the cross—I would have flashes of the silver ravine scores of metres below my right foot.
This was the only context when seeing a bus rushing at me I hoped we would hit it rather than attempt to get out of the way. As the driver slammed on the brakes while making the cross, I wondered why he didn’t put more faith in having both hands on the wheel and the merits of not having to skid to avoid potentially killing us all.
After a few tense hours, we were out of the semi-tropical hills and into freezing fog more than 4,000 metres up. Bolivians share an instinctive mistrust of headlights and true to form the driver reluctantly put on the ropey sidelights only once overtaking had become suicidal.
As the decrepit machine hurtled through the mist, the driver took a t’shirt out of plastic bag. Squinting as we flew into the nothingness, he wiped the thick condensation from the window and then popped the plastic bag in his mouth. I’d never seen anyone eat a plastic bag before or since, I can reveal it requires an awful lot of chewing without any discernable sign of pleasure. He did, however, polish it off before a post-meal fag.