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Published: April 3rd 2009
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Bolivia, our good friend to the South, is my current stop. It´s like Peru but all the edges are tinged with crazy. Sort of like how there´s Superman and Bizarro Superman. But I think I like it more. La Paz is an really different kind of city. The highest capital in the world consists of a pueblito type look to it. It´s as if it started as a small Bolivian town and just oozed out over all the hills. And then they stuck a couple million people and all the major businesses inside to clash with it´s ancient style. The corporate glove doesn´t fit the Bolivian hand.
What makes this foriegn land so crazy, you say? There are witches markets which sell dead llama fetus´s that you bury in the foundation of your house for good luck. You can also buy an array of other dead animals, charms, and herbal medicines (both in normal and hyper-hallucinogenic forms).
Drug (ab)use here is much more open and prevolent than in Peru. Here some forgieners come here only to party with cheap drugs. Locals and travelers use them openly alike whether it´s in the bathroom or in the middle of the street
on a sunny afternoon. They represent their countries so well.
In La Paz there is a prison, se llama San Pedro, and was the number one illegal attraction in the city. For a mere $40 one can go on a a guided tour inside the prison (illegal), meet the criminals and their families face to face (illegal but really interesting), and then for the grand finally you can buy coke at your friendly nieghborhood prison cocain plant (just slightly more illegal). Just like Disney Land, right? Despite these things no one has ever been busted or convicted for entering the jail. That is if you leave that cocain be. Well, with our fortune the night before we were going to try to enter, there was a slight problem at the jail. The media had caught wind of the illegal tours and wanted to exploit it. So they waited outside the exit to photo any forienger that left. They waited for over 4 hours for the 40 travelers inside to come out and bust them. Hmmm, it was actually less dangerous to be insdie a Bolivian prison filled with murderers and drug trafficers than going outside. It was all over
the news and I was even interviewed the next day about it for TV (I´m famous!). So with all the ¨heat¨ on the prison, it sort of took away the opportunity. Maybe I can still see it on the way back. Ok, what makes the prison actually worth seeing is that the goverment doesn´t pay for the prisoners way. So a lot of the criminals´ families move in with them and bring in their homes as well. They have appliances and furnishings and they try to make an (honest) living from within. You can also talk to them and they are more than happy to share their story.
That makes it a place of interest.
Decided to leave the crazy behind and head south for Salar de Uyuni- The famous salt flats of Bolivia! This is an absolutely huge plane of salt with a nice glaze of water on top. Camera perspective is altered here and you can make some fun photos of depth confusion. And of course we didn´t do a very good job of making them. One can drive for hours and hours and still not touch the other side. Anyway, my words can´t articulate nearly as
well as the photos so I´ll leave you with that. I will note that being on a bus to Uyuni resembles being chucked around in a drying machine. Imagine a crappy coach bus, completely full, sitting next to a window sort of held closed by duct tape, for 10 hours of off-roading in sandunes. At night while you try to sleep. And you have to pee. Really bad.
Jealouuus? Checked out the area around Tupiza, in the southwest of country. Looked exactly like Arizona. Big red mountains sprinked with short green vegitation. Grabbed some horses for the day and tromped around the desert for a bit. The horses liked to pretend they were mules and be all lazy and unresponsive. But a good wack from a branch and they take off like Sundance Kid. Which, you may guess, was quite close to the place where the real Butch Casidy and Sundance Kid came to cause trouble in Bolivia. Who goes to Bolivia?
So that was a short rendition of my first week in Bolivia. Will Pete make it out of the country in one piece? Will he end up in a Bolivian prison? Find out next time...
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