Getting out of La Paz

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Spanish classes are done for the week and I guess the weekend is here. I am heading to the salt flats either Saturday or Sunday evening. It is an overnight bus and you arrive at 7 AM and start the salt flat tours at 10ish. I am deciding between a one day or a three day...once you´ve seen a bunch of salt, isn´t there more to do with the other two days? I have heard various opinions and I guess I will decide when I wake up in the morning. I also want to get down to the Amazon for a few days and stay overnight in the jungle but we will have to see how all of the timing works out. The border in Peru is still not open and folks are finally showing up with news of alternate, perhaps illegal ways to get across.

I need to get to Cuzco by in the next seven days or so in order to everything set up for the Machu Picchu experience. I have also had some other ideas of ways to spend the next few weeks that weren´t in my original itinerary.

So the most exciting thing that happened over the last few days. An English guy and I headed out to find pizza last night around 8 PM. Not too terribly late. So we start heading up some streets that I was told to stay out of after dark. I had that feeling something not too nice was going to happen soon. As we continued into the herd of people space got very, very tight. All of a sudden the guy I was with got surrounded by what was probably eight to ten people and had salt thrown on his neck. He reached up and I started backing away because it was about to get very dodgy. He paused for a second and when he was finally able to get his hands down to his pockets he noticed everything was gone. Everyone (at this point about 30 people 20 or so were not involved) started looking at the two of us and he started pushing two of the guys. We started walking away and two locals led us to a police officer who took the English guy back to the crowd. I stayed right in the middle of everyone´s eyes because I have a skepticism of corrupt police in foreign countries and there wasn´t a single comforting thing in sight. Quite a terrifying experience. I have had that happen to me before with knives but it doesn´t matter how many times you´ve seen it or experienced it, when it happens you can´t predict the outcome or the reactions.

Fortunately the English guy has found work at the hostel and no activity was reported on his credit cards. I spoke with my Spanish teacher today who looked at me like I had four eyes and she mentioned most Bolivians won´t even venture into that part of town. Then she started telling me about taxi´s being a great place to rob people in La Paz and not to get into one after dark because that´s how a lot of people get killed. She was upset about it when I told her the story because she feels like the reputation keeps a lot of tourist money out of Bolivia. Pretty intense evening but nothing too terrible happened.

Off to see a new part of Bolivia soon. Perhaps 22 hours perhaps 46.

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Comments

[Merritt Tise]

Stay safe... that entry made me very scared.