Bolivia (2)

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Anecdotes from Bolivia:
Sucre. Our first day in Sucre was a bit of a disaster. After a 12 hour bus ride from La Paz, we arrived at 8am on a Sunday morning. At the hotel we checked into, we noticed an advertisement touting a bus trip out to a beautiful Sunday markets in a town 65km away, Tarabuco. As we would only be in Sucre for a few days, we realised this would be our only opportunity to go to these markets, so we quickly hurried down to the pick up point by 8:30am, jumped on the bus and off we went. Three kilometres down the road, we run into a massive traffic jam. We find out the major road out of the Sucre to Tarabuco has been closed for a bicycle race until midday, however none of the city had been informed of this, so there was a kilometre or so of stuck traffic! Patty and I quickly decide we are not waiting in a bus for 3 hours, so we walked back into Sucre to get our money back. At the agency, they informed us that they have now rescheduled the bus to leave at 11:30am and if we wanted to go then we could. So, suckers for punishment, we agree to try again then. At 11:30am, we once again we head off to Tarabuco, and once again we hit a long traffic jam outside the city. The bike race is still going, but we are told it will only be another 15 minutes until they open the road. So we wait around again. An hour goes by (with a total of 5 bikes, all with police escorts passing by!) before the road is finally reopened. It appears that there were only a total of 10 bikes in the whole race, which the local council in their wisdom has shut down a major arterial out of the city (with no alternative routes) for half a day! Welcome to Bolivia! On top of this, we finally make it to Tarabuco 2 hours later, only to find that half the markets are packed up and what is left is nothing to write home about, especially having just come from La Paz and the markets there. So an hour and a half stuck in this little town with little to do before another two hours back to Sucre in the bus. A very long day with only a sore backside to show for it from 18 of the last 22 hours on buses!

Hair cuts. We decided to get our hair cut in Sucre as Patty had some dead ends she wanted trimmed and mine was getting a little long, so we thought it would be nice heading to the same hair dresser for a cut. However, although my hair cut turned out all right, Patty’s beautifully layered styling, which she had done by a professional hairdresser in Colombia, was left in ruins! Both of us paid about $AUD 3 for our hair cuts, so I felt like I had been ripped off as it’s the first time that I have ever paid the same price for a hair cut as Patty. I then also had to bare the brunt of Patty’s bad mood for the rest of the day once she realised what they had done to her hair. I doubt whether she will attempt another hair cut until she is back in Colombia in December!

San Pedro Prison. The day after we arrived in La Paz we walked down to the prison to attempt a visit. Our first impression was that it looks nothing like a prison, as it is just a large concrete wall around an entire block with a small arched gate and a couple of guards out the front, facing towards a beautiful plaza. No barbed wire around the walls, no guard houses, etc. While standing out the front, we were approached by a Bolivian lady who spoke English. She asked us if we wanted a tour inside and told us how much it was (very expensive in terms of Bolivian money, about AUD$65 per person). She explained that it was expensive as there were a lot of people who had to be paid off to get inside the prison including guards, prisoners, guides, body guards, etc. At first we were a little sceptical until we confirmed with a couple of other tourists who had just completed the tour that this was the going price, and that the tour was legit and worthwhile. So in through the small gate we went with the Bolivian lady, through a metal detector and into the Colonel’s office where we were searched by a prison guard and asked to leave our backpack and cameras. We were then escorted through another gate into a plaza filled with prisoners and introduced to our guide, Felipe, and our two body guards. Felipe was a Dutch guy who had been inside for nearly two years, caught at the La Paz airport attempting to smuggle 5kg of cocaine out of the country (more than 80% of the prisoners are inside on drug related crimes). Our two body guards were Bolivians sentenced to 30 years, one a mass murderer, the other inside for killing someone in a car accident. (In Bolivia, apparently there is no difference for killing one person, or fifty people, the sentence is the same at 30 years.) It was a little overwhelming and claustrophobic when first entering the prison as there was a wall of prisoners in the main courtyard where we were introduced to our guide, and I had to contain a small amount of panic that I felt being in such close proximity to all these criminals. So from here the tour started. We found out the prison is divided into eight sectors with varying degrees of luxury, and cells are bought or rented for the duration of a prisoner's sentence, with the wealthiest area (cells were sold for up to $US1500) providing inmates with private bathrooms, a kitchen, and cable television. (We saw one cell that had a plasma tv, large hifi system and a bank of speakers along the length of the entire cell!) However, most of those inside the prison live in cramped conditions with it being common for single-room cells to accommodate five people. Almost all the sections contained market stalls and places to play games. There were also numerous canteens, shops and restaurants, all owned and run by the inmates. One of these small shops even sold large pairs of scissors! (On average there are 4 deaths a month inside the prison, either from natural causes or violent crime, normally stabbings!) To support themselves while in prison, most prisoners have jobs such as messengers, hairdressers, and shopkeepers, with many now also profiting from the tourist trade. Another amazing thing we saw was, aside from the 1,500 prisoners and the guards, the wives and over 200 children of the inmates often stay inside the walls, but are allowed to come and go as they please. (They provide an important link with the outside and can bring items into the prison, which are then sold in the market stalls or directly from cells.) The children are educated in nearby schools and spend the rest of their time playing within the prison grounds. We ended up spending nearly 3 hours in the prison looking around. Outside of nearly getting myself electrocuted (there are live, exposed wires running power to the cells at head height in all the narrow corridors throughout the prison, which prisoners then just add extra cables / lights / appliances to as required!); one of the tourists we were with even got a hair cut from a contract killer in his cell while we were there, the whole time with Patty asking him questions about his life! Very bizarre!

Potosi co-operative mines. The silver / zinc / tin mines in Potosi are on a hillside just outside the city and are run by co-operatives. There are a total of 42 co-operatives with 182 operating shafts and about 15,000 miners working in the mines. The miners work in groups of 4 - 6 people. Each group works independently of each other and there may be 10 or 15 groups working within one shaft. The ore they dig out of the ground they are paid directly for by refineries that then process the ore. The miners must pay 50% of what they earn to the co-operative, who allows them to work in their shaft. The rest they split between them. Back in the colonial days, the mines were very rich in minerals, with veins of minerals being up to 80cm thick! Its no wonder Potosi was the richest city in the world in those times. However, nowadays the veins of ore in the rock aren’t much more than 1 - 3 cm thick, and they may achieve 100g of silver per tonne of ore they dig out. The miners earn on average a measly $US40 - 60 / month, and this is excluding the dynamite, tools and equipment they need to buy, as this is not provided by the co-operatives. The miners work in primitive conditions manually handling all of the ore with shovels, picks and buckets to get it to the surface and out of the mine shaft. They live off coco leaves throughout the day, chewing large balls of them, which provide them with the nutrients they require so that they don’t have to leave the shaft throughout the 10 - 12 hour shifts to eat. Only a very small percentage of the people involved in the mines make much money, and these are the co-operative owners and refineries who process the ore.

Bolivian and Peruvian restaurants. We have seen quite a few funny things with the way Bolivians and Peruvians run their restaurants. They probably look upon these methods as being very cost effective, however they are very inefficient. One such practice is to run two or three restaurants, but only have one kitchen. Waiters are then seen madly running between nearby restaurants with food orders and plates of food, and on top of this poor kitchen staff that have to provide all this food are generally totally understaffed. (At times our food took over an hour and a half to arrive). A similar practice is placing food on their menu, which they don’t actually make in their own kitchen, but get from a nearby restaurant. My personal favourite is the order food as required practice. This involves waiting for the diner to place their order, before then going and buying the raw ingredients to make the meal! And then only enough for that meal, so if someone at a different table orders the same meal, out the waiter goes to a nearby shop to once again buy the raw ingredients (in this instance it was breakfast and the raw materials were a couple of eggs and bread!)

Things we missed while travelling through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia?

Family and Friends - Of course!

Clean streets - Bolivians have absolutely no regard for disposing of rubbish properly. Anywhere and everywhere they will throw out rubbish. I think this culture mainly stems from the fact that there is hardly a rubbish bin to be found in Bolivia, as well as the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any government money that goes towards workers to maintain any of the public areas. There has definitely been no “Tidy Towns” or “Clean up Australia” type campaigns run in these countries!

Toilet etiquette - Bolivians and Peruvians have absolutely no modesty when it comes to taking a leak. They will just drop their pants / flop it out and take a pee anywhere (not hard for the women as none of them where panties under their colourful skirts we have been told)! We have seen guys peeing in the middle of busy streets, in alleyways, corners and even in the door of someone’s open restaurant in broad daylight! We also saw one old lady squatting over a drain having a pee (thank god for their big dresses). Any time you go walking in the street, its best to avoid any wet patches as it is almost certainly urine.
Building codes - Doorways a standard size? What for? How many times I've whacked my head on a doorway made for a midget, or tripped on a random floor protrusion or obstacle. Some where even too low for Patty (she was loving it)!!!

Electrical codes - The amount of dangling live wires, cheaply rigged wiring, electric showers that electrocute, etc. makes one a bit nervous. Just something simple like putting light switches in a standard place is a pure luxury. I don't know how many dark rooms I've had to fully feel to find the light switch hidden behind the mirror across the room or other such ridiculous place.

Animal Control - Stray dogs are everywhere, and not only are they noisy, but sometimes dangerous. There was one major road in La Paz where we saw in a 1 km stretch 35 stray dogs (two mounting each other), and five stray pigs!

Emission Standards - Pretty much every local bus and many of the taxis on road in Bolivia and Peru are at least 30 years old and spewing black smoke into the atmosphere.

Coffee - It would make logical sense that the countries that grow some of our favorite coffees would only have the freshest and best beans and coffee. But the sad truth is that the best beans can be sold for a much higher price to foreign countries than the locals can afford, so everywhere served Nescafe as a standard. We had to go to the supermarket for Chris to buy a large packet of decent coffee to take on all our trips.

Pedestrian Rights - In some countries they drive like we would be liable for damaging their car if they ran us over.

Traffic lights - Even if they were there they'd be ignored in many places, but the "honking/chicken" method of determining right of way at an intersection in Arequipa, Peru seemed a bit dangerous.

Change - Especially in Ecuador and Peru - How can you expect your economies to improve when no one can buy anything because nobody in the entire country can break a note even as small as the equivalent to AUD$2?!?!?! The cash machines in Ecuador only distribute the largest of bills that are a struggle to change. In these places it becomes a game of whits to keep the small bills you have - you have to hide them because if they are seen you will never be able to break the big bills. And you often send the seller running around town to get any change. In most cases, the responsibility to provide exact payment is on the customer, not on the business to provide change.

Showers with Pressure - Patty went days in some cases without washing her hair due to lack of a shower with decent water pressure.

Toilet Paper - Pack your own of this luxury item, baby.

Customer Service - One thing we should consider ourselves very lucky. Restaurant service is spotty at best. We turned up to a hotel in Puno late one evening following a long bus ride from Arequipa. We had made a reservation a couple of days beforehand, yet when we attempted to check in, we find that there is no record of our reservation and no room available. After questioning the receptionist on what happened to our reservation, she gets super offended when we get a bit upset, and ends up threatening to call the police if we didn’t leave the premises immediately! On another occasion, Patty goes to buy a pack of chips from a vendor. As the vendor removes the packet from a band of sticky tape holding the packet up for display, the bag is ripped open. When Patty asks for an undamaged one, the vendor gets offended and tells us we have to buy the damaged one. When Patty refuses, she gets abused by the vendor!

Real mattresses - We attempted to sleep on numerous saggy double mattresses where by the middle of the night we were pressed together in the middle of the bed. We ended up resorting to requesting single beds to avoid this uncomfortable situation.

Ketchup & Mayonnaise- Unless it came in a packet, the stuff served out of refillable bottles in restaurants was this weird, runny, bland substance with absolutely no flavour.

Peaceful public transit journeys - So many sales people yelling at you selling miracle cures for all sorts of ailments in neat powder filled packets. They board buses for their captive audiences and roll out the sales pitch. If it's not pushy sales people, it's some sort of macho action film that usually involves lots of killing. This can be a benefit though, as most of the time the movie is in Spanish with no English subtitles, and a lot of these action movies you didn’t need to understand the dialogue to follow the movie.

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