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Published: September 27th 2012
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Our dream-like visit to Bolivia's spellbinding southwest is over, and I find myself back in the hustle and bustle of La Paz, quite a shock after seven days of quiet, wide-open spaces. There is time, of course, to enjoy more of La Paz's lovely international food scene (who knew you could get such an authentic chicken madras, or such delicious miso soup, in Bolivia?) before I have to depart yet again.
After a couple of days of enforced rest in La Paz - I think my body is sending me some sort of "slow down" message - I make my way south. Just in time, as it happens.
Bolivia is well known - perhaps best known in the world, together with Nepal - for its tradition of extraordinarily frequent and sometimes violent public protests, strikes, lockdowns and demonstrations. You certainly can't accuse Bolivians of not being engaged in the politics of their country. Seemingly many times a year, La Paz and other major cities are blockaded, their economies paralysed for days over all sorts of disputes. Interestingly, the one going on at the moment is all to do with mining. I haven't really absorbed the details, but two groups
of miners - salaried and cooperative - at a recently nationalised mine are at loggerheads over how to manage the facility. Regardless of the ins and outs, each group of miners has successively imposed a
bloqueo of a day or more on La Paz, covering all roads leading to and from the capital with rocks (their preferred
modus operandi) and showering any vehicles trying to get round the blockades with stones. Bolivians captured on TV seem pretty resigned to these events, being pictured quietly getting off their buses and walking - sometimes many kilometres - to where they need to go, or to get a bus on the other side. It all sounds rather silly, but it's deadly serious - often literally. One assumes the impact on the local economy is huge, and just before we arrived back in La Paz a miner was killed in a scuffle. When this happens the group concerned quickly clears off, only to reappear a few days later. Strictly from the traveller's point of view, it is unbelievably annoying, and quite possibly explains why Bolivia - with all of Peru's natural beauty and more besides - gets relatively so few visitors.
I managed
to leave La Paz bound for the mining (whoops - bad idea in the circumstances?) city of Oruro, some three hours to the south, on Sunday morning. That very evening the capital was blockaded and no buses whatsoever left the city for 24 hours. Lucky! My reason for going to Oruro - a place of very limited appeal, it seems - was to catch a train south to Tupiza, a small town right on the Argentine border and, as it happens, where I was only ten or so days ago starting my trip to the altiplano. Tupiza lies in a land of multicoloured canyons and is supposedly a wonderful place to do some riding, which I have been missing of late! The railway line used to go all the way to La Paz, but having a railway line reaching all the way to the administrative capital was considered illogical and the La Paz-Oruro section was axed some years ago - and we complain about Dr Beeching! After a long and dull wait in Oruro I boarded the
Ferrocarriles Andinos company's
Wara Wara del Sur overnight service headed to Villazón on the Argentine border, due to arrive at 8.35am in Tupiza.
Well, what can I say? I arrived in Tupiza at 8.35am. To say I was surprised was an understatement. Call me a cynic but I wasn't expecting Bolivian railways to be the picture of organisation. But they were. I'd seen a Michael Palin programme where his train derailed every few minutes and had to be levered back on the tracks with rocks. Mine didn't. The
Wara Wara del Sur had lovely comfy reclining seats, blankets, pillows, a dining car - yes, a
dining car on a Bolivian train - free breakfast of bread and scrambled eggs, onboard films for the first couple of hours (well, one was a film adaptation of a Danielle Steele "novel"...you can't have all your wishes come true...) followed by blissful darkness and silence for the rest of the journey, toilets which made a British train toilet look like a normal Bolivian toilet (alcohol hand gel! hand-dryers!)...you get the idea - it was most impressive. Hats off to
el tren. Hopefully I'll get to take one again on my way to Brazil.
In Tupiza there was time to say hello to Raul again before heading off the following morning on a two-day ride through
the area's beautiful but little-visited canyons. I've never been to said states, but to me it looked like the landscape could have been transplanted from the western United States - a riot of earthy colours and of completely bizarre and mind-warping geological formations just made for riding through with a leather hat on your head. Which is precisely what I did...
As to the title of this blog entry, which I couldn't resist (I don't believe in blasphemy, by the way), one of the valleys in the area goes by the name of
Valle de los Machos. This being rather too euphemistic for the average cheeky Bolivian, it more commonly gets called
"el Valle de los Pipis" - I don't think any translation is required.
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