too much time in Bolivia

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A week is a long time in La Paz, too long by about six and a half days. The Hotel we stayed in was lovely, eating and going out at night is dirt cheap and there are loads of bargains if you like Alpaca jumpers (shame they all come with pictures of lama’s or Pacha Mama stitched into them). However the city is dirty, chaotic and full of thieving toe rags, some of which come from surprising backgrounds.

After our week in La Paz we came to realize a few things about the city. All of the cab drivers are illiterate. If you give them an address or god forbid a map of the city centre and ask them to take you there, they look dumbfounded and mystified as if they’d never heard of La Paz, let alone driven around it. It is critical in La Paz to know what chicken shop is near your destination as cab drivers use them to navigate like migrating birds use the earth’s magnetic fields. Every cab fare costs 10 Boliviano. Ripping off Gringo’s (white Europeans / Americans) is the nation’s favorite pastime and it is rumored the Bolivian Olympic committee are lobbying to have it included at the next Olympics as it appears it is the only thing they are good at (excluding producing high quality cocaine - apparently). We may sound bitter but we have our reasons.

After four days on our tod we changed hotels to meet up with are new GAP group. At our welcoming dinner we found out that the other 12 people had been traveling together for more than 20 days. Therefore we felt compelled to join them the next day on the ‘death road’ bike ride as it would be a good opportunity to bond. Neither of us had been too keen on doing the activity before as there is over 6 hours of riding and we had been told somewhere that 7 people had died doing it in the last 5 years. Plus we had done something similar in the Colca Canyon.

We drove for about an hour and a half out of La Paz and ascended to 4700 meters, the altitude for our start point. On route we were told a couple of facts that unnerved us and which we probably would have been better off not hearing or being told before we left La Paz. Last year 43 people died attempting death road. The death count this year is 14 to date (in 4 1/2 months). The last death being that of an Israeli a couple of weeks earlier. Also our group had the option to go with a tour for $75 or $40. The only difference being the quality of mountain bike. They took the cheaper option.

At the start point we were given a safety briefing in Spanish by the tour guide (everyone on the tour was English speaking). There was a translator who truly was a remarkable linguist. He could translate 5-10 minutes of Spanish into a couple of words of English!!! The first 20 odd km is on tarmac road and the scenery was as dramatic and imposing as the Colca Canyon. Half way through this route we entered the rising clouds and it started to piss down. The rain became torrential and visibility was poor. We quickly got drenched and when we reached the 10 minutes (try 30) of uphill we realized how bad the gears were on the bikes (like everything else). One of our group’s tires burst as he was on a descent and he got to see close up the quality of the recently laid tarmac road. Tom used his dodgy gears and the impending uphill section as an excuse to get out of the rain and into the warm. He took great pleasure in waving at a rain drenched Gemma as the support van passed her driving up the hill.

When we got to the start of the ‘death road’ (a dirt track 40km long & 10 feet wide that hugs the edge of a canyon wall and descends 3500 meters. At one point there is a shear drop of over 1000meters to your right) Tom got out of the support van and started ‘death road’ with the rest of the group. The rain and poor visibility was relentless and after about 30minutes both Tom & Gem used our GAP leaders retirement as inspiration to give up too. Whilst riding Tom had worked out in his head what he thought the odds were for actually surviving death road (being the accountant he is, he’d built in a coefficient to take into account of it raining and us being on crap bikes - sad bastard!!!) Basically by his calculation we had the same chance of surviving as getting 4 numbers in the national lottery.

We thought we’d be safer in the support van (we were certainly warmer and dryer) but it didn’t feel like it. At one point our driver decided to race ahead so he could take more photos. That was probably the scariest 5 minutes of our lives and the driver was lucky not to get lynched by his pale and petrified passengers. Everyone of our group survived and we were taken to a local restaurant for a nice food poisoning inducing buffet. After our dinner we had an equally grueling 4 hour drive back to La Paz in a crammed and uncomfortable minivan. We had to stop every 30minutes to let two of the girls puke.

In our opinion if you ever have the misfortune to be in La Paz and you’re considering doing the death road bike ride…Don’t bother. When the weather’s nice apparently the views are amazing but are they really worth risking your life over. Probably not and the only people you’re likely to impress are those irritating bearded traveler types we met in Ecuador. These people are just as impressed by white people who have dreadlocks that they haven’t washed for the last 2 years.

We thought the bike ride was the worst day of our trip, the next day was much worse. It was an early start for Tom. The food poisoning kicked in about 2.30 and he spent most of the night on the toilet. In the morning we had to go down to the Tour Operator to begrudgingly pay for our ‘once of a lifetime’ bike ride. As Tom was incapacitated, Gemma had to venture out alone and it was then that she had her bag slashed. The thief helping himself to her wallet which contained 50 pound of local currency and her cash card. It wouldn’t be the only time we’d get robbed today.

Gemma called a doctor for Tom. When he arrived he examined Tom and deduced he had food poisoning and said Tom would need an injection now and one in 4 hours time (both in the bum!!). Tom paid the doctor for both injections and the two call out fees. The doctor seemed very professional and had a good manner about him. He asked Tom to fill out a comments book and said he would be back at 8pm for a second (paid for) examination and injection. That was the last time we saw the crook.

It wasn’t the last time we were robbed that day though. As Tom had to see the doctor and Gemma had to report her incident we couldn’t get the (much needed) bus out of La Paz with the rest of our group. Our GAP leader arranged for a local travel agency to organize our night bus and transfer to the new hotel. The tickets cost us $26 each from the agency. When we got them they had actually only cost $8.50. At the other end, our transfer drove us around Cochabamba for 10-15minutes. It was only in the morning when we left the hotel that we realized the bus terminal was one block away. Street Urchins, Doctors and Travel Agents, there all thieving scum in Bolivia!!!

We thought our luck had changed when we got on the night bus. The seats were a good 6 feet apart and could retract so you were almost lying horizontal. We had just made our selves comfortable and were ready for bed when they put a film on. No Hollywood blockbuster for us. Ours was a Bolivian classic with the volume turned up for maximum annoyance. There was a lot of shouting in the film and little else. We thought it was from the 1940’s as it was in brown and white but then there was a nightclub scene with Whigfields ‘Saturday Night’ playing in the background!!!! Very bizarre. It was so bad it was almost funny. It looked like Stevie Wonder had done the editing and Byork had done the sound track. Not very soothing when you want to sleep.

There wasn’t much to do in Cochabamba apart from hang out with Jesus. Gemma bought some very fetching trainers for 4 pound!! The most expensive thing in her wardrobe. We decided as a group to fly to Sucre as the road between the two cities was meant to be dangerous and an uncomfortable ride. (another $120 dollars robbed off us…this time by GAP). When we arrived in Sucre it was actually quite nice, unlike everywhere else we’ve been in Bolivia. The area seems quite affluent and the buildings and landscape is well kept and clean. We were starting to warm to Sucre before we went out clubbing in the evening.

As we were waiting to enter the club some locals spat at us and starting abusing us for being Gringos with a little anti American slurs thrown in for good measure. Anti Americanism seems to quite prevalent in Bolivia. In nearly every town we have been to there has been a socialist / unionist type of demonstration in the main square, most of these have had at least one anti US banner. The government seems aligned to the Chevez school of corrupt socialist government, stoking up anti-Americanism to cover up for there own short comings. To date our experience of Bolivia is that it is the backside of South America and we will be glad to leave. We are hoping that our visit to the Salt Lakes and Attacama Desert will help change this perception.

The major tourist attraction in Sucre is the Dinosaur Footprints to the north of the city. A massive wall of limestone has footprints from over 30 different Dinosaurs dating back 150 million years. The life size replica dinosaurs in the park only date back to 1995 though. It is probably the smallest theme park in the world and the highlight was the creative mind of our English speaking guide, who had us reenacting how smaller carnivorous dinosaurs would hunt. The Dino Truck that took us there looked like it had been built by the Blue Peter team with dinosaur head and claws masking taped to its bonnet. It was all good fun though.

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