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Published: December 14th 2011
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Susan and I attempted getting an early night to recover, but next door were a loud group of ten who had earlier been spotted coming in from the streets holding a bin-bag full of something. They were playing a drinking game, but replacing every single sip with a snort, which resulted in conversation only consisting of grunts and shouts. Welcome to La Paz, the capital of cocaine tourism! Here it´s not just the altitude that´s high; the taxi drivers are dealers and world´s first cocaine bar sells it´s cheap, strong specialism, to (only) tourists every night... and morning.
I sleepily headed to the American Embassy, the last thing on my to-do list after having all of my documents stolen. My cheap flight home via Miami transits for just five hours, but crazy paranoid Americans being crazy paranoid Americans, they won´t accept my emergency passport, so I have to pay for a full visa. I wasn't allowed into the Embajado; instead a woman greeted me outside with a sheet full of instructions on the step by step process to obtain the stamp. She conveniently only spoke enough English to say it would take two or three weeks, and then switched to
Ladies in the market
The traditional dress was actually started by the Spanish so that they could distinguish lowly Indigenous people from themselves Español, saying something like "computadora dice no" (computer says no).
Luckily, after the mugging escapade triggered some kind of scary, female nest building instinct in me, I´d already decided to stay put in La Paz for a while. I´ve never shaken the inconvenient but fun restlessness to experience the entire world, and have been lucky enough to do a lot of travelling, but this was always going to be my last big trip. I started to feel anxious about returning to an evil job market, and realised that it would be helpful to bring home more than a few ridiculous stories and an extra half-stone of beer-gut. After many, many months of figuring out what to do in Dave Cam´s Big (Jobless) Society, I´ve finally concluded that I want to be poor forever and spend at least a year searching for my next position; so I´m aiming for a career in Communications for charities. For this, I need examples of my writing, so I emailed all of the big, UK funded charities working in Bolivia and Peru asking to interview them. Then, feeling a safe distance away to let you mean, judgemental people read stuff (and wanting to replace
stolen photos with another record of my adventures) I started blogging.
Despite being sensible, I really enjoyed the next week or so (minus the lengthy visa application, which involved answering questions about to what extent I´ve previously participated in the recruitment of child soldiers and assisted in torture). Susan and I made the most of a constant flow of brilliant people coming and going from our dorm, eating out and regularly frequenting the hostel bar and some clubs. One of the brilliant things about Bolivia is that the food is ridiculously boring, so you feel no guilt about eating lunch every day at a British run Indian Curry House, then for dinner choosing whether to spend your £3 budget at the Texan steak house, an amazing Dutch restuarant, a Mexican restaurant or many other tourist favourites.
After saying goodbye to Susan and the others in my dorm, a cycle of wreck-heads staying for three days slowly but surely pissed me off. The seedy side of travelling in South America was exposed, as chatting in our dorm at one point, 100% of people had been robbed. Two Aussie guys on a coke tour had just arrived from Santa Cruz,
another part of Boliva, where they´d come out of a club to find a man lying in a pool of blood with three bullet holes through his chest. It was dealing related, which sparked another story from someone else who´d seen a dealer shot down by the Brazillian police. One of the Aussie´s was really affected by what he´d seen, saying he was only going to drink for the rest of his time on the continent. For this, his mate called him a "faaackin paaansy".
The rest of the story involved them getting surrounded by road-blockers on their way to La Paz, luckily getting rescued by a Bolivian who beat off his fellow countrymen with a pool cue. The following night, two friendly Scottish lads who were meant to arrive back from Uyuni were late. They arrived early in the morning, telling me that due to road-blocks they did an under-the-table deal with a driver to get back to La Paz. Their driver had to drive through back-roads with the lights off, while leaning out of the window to see; but despite these efforts they ran into a blockade, and men surrounded the truck with fire-torches while shooting a
gun into the air. The driver was prepared, telling them not to speak at all, producing fake passports, and telling the blockaders that they were a family from Libya seeking refuge. Luckily, education in Bolivia is poor, and the men believed that glistening white Scots and some other Europeans were a Libyan family, letting them pass.
Meanwhile Pablo (my brilliantly warm, cheery and funny Spanish teacher) attempted to get me chatting more easily, which unfortunately includes rolling ones ´R´s. One day, I went to a shop to replace my stolen camera, and walked up to the counter to announce that I needed "cargar" (to charge) it. Later, I asked Pablo why they´d pulled faces at me before errupting into snorting laughter. Apparently "carrrrrgarrrr" is ´to charge´, while "cargar" is ´to shit´. Shit.
Spanish proving too much of a challenge, Pablo also told me lots about Boliva. With 80% of the population remaining Indigenous, it´s a very unique country. It´s the poorest in South America, due to a combination of very high altitude, and losing wars against Chile and Paraguay which (respectively) robbed them of a coast line and cut off trading routes to Brazil, making exportation of the
Yep, that´s the secret ingredient!
But the US doesn´t have a problem with that. Neither do Bolivians, they put old coke bottles on their loved one´s graves here! country´s rich natural resources very difficult. A large proportion of the country make a living from farming coca; the leaf from which cocaine is made, which has been used since long before Colonial times to reduce the effects of altitude. New US imposed laws (yes, they have that power) have started cracking down on coca farmers to reduce cocaine use in the States, which is having a hugely negative effect on traditional life in Bolivia, not to mention the local economy. Bolivians really do not use cocaine, and President Evo Morales (the first ever Indigenous leader, and a former coca farmer), has been battling hard with the US to crack down on cocaine production, instead of the coca leaf. Pablo showed me that a near revolution enabled Morales to cease power from the Spanish minority five years ago, evidenced by huge bullet holes outside Congress in the main plaza. They were created when the Police sided with the workers on one side of the plaza, so the former (shamed and corrupt) President called in the army who squared up on the other side before a shoot-off left a fair few people dead. Mr President got airlifted out of Congress and
is now exiled in the US, while the Bolivian people are calling for him to return to face charges which include genocide. New President Morales is hugely popular, and has rapidly introduced change; including a state pension and incentives to keep kids in school after they´re old enough to put one foot in front of the other, and therefore work.
Pablo The Great knew that I´m interested in Development, and where money from abroad really goes, so he got me a heavily discounted room in his mate´s hotel. The mate used to work at a French and Swiss funded orphanage by Lake Titicaca, on route to Peru, so after three great weeks in La Paz, we headed there.
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El Eterno Caminante
Greg
HAHAHAHAHA!!!
Oh how I LOVE that USA map!! ( I'm a citizen unfortunately ) so true!! that's why I'm leaving this sorry ass country :-) as many people I've met traveling have difficulties with understanding that these things are from our gov't not the people ;-) anyways another great blog ( sorry i'm just following along )