Bolivia, Old South America

Saludos de Ecuador:
Exactly two months left before we return and while the constant changing of hotels, lugging of suitcases, and pressure of fitting into our schedule all the things we want to do, nags at us, we still have wonderful times and will leave this wonderful continent with a lot of mixed feelings. Which is what we left Bolivia with. When Carol and I sat down to decide what we wanted to write about that country, we started with the obvious: that is was the most difficult country to enjoy. then we said that wasn't fair because we had some really incredible times there. So we said that the Bolivians were the most difficult people to like, but again, that isn't fair because it is the only country where we didn't have personal contact, and that certainly tilts the scale and we did meet some people who really went out of their way to make our stay enjoyable. We settled on the statement that Bolivia was the most difficult country in which to travel, for many reasons.
First, it is the most remote country with the least developed system of roads and almost all travel takes place during the nighttime. When people ask us what Bolivia is like, all we can do is respond "Dark." Traveling for 10 hours in total darkness with all the drastic starkness of the Andes out there just beyond our vision, over road which can best be described as something on which Hannibal would have had trouble, is tough physically and mentally. Carol is able to achieve a modicum of sleep, but for me, it means entering the bus at 7:00 p.m. , already tired, riding for 10 hours to get to another town where you have to wait for another bus at 7:00 that night for a second sleepless night. It invites physical disaster, which occurred with frequency to me in Bolivia. All this happens at elevations which range from 9,000 to 14,000 feet.
Secondly, it is the most primitive of all countries down here in terms of gods and services which are antiquated, if not non-existent. Bolivia manufactures very little of what it consumes and therefore, with everything imported, there is always a dearth of materials.
Thirdly, the people are the most distant. With 70% of the population people of pure Indian blood, they remain the leas friendly and the most stand-offish. Of course 500 years of utter exploitation, enslavement, and outright murder on the part of the white man may have something to do with this unwillingness to communicate. Whatever the reason, the people do not seem to be a very happy lot and it is hard to evoke a smile from them.
Fourthly, it is a country rife with corruption and if you're not watching out for thieves, then you have to watch out for the police. For instance, one of our friends was walking down a street and a man stopped and engaged him in conversation. No problem, that is what most of the people traveling down here, want. They talked for a couple of minutes and then the man left. Our friend started down the street when he was stopped by the police and was informed that he had been seen talking to a drug trafficker. He took him to a room where he was told that it would cost him $1,000 to have the whole incident forgotten. He was able to extricate himself from the situation, but we know of many people, (like Carol)who eventually wind up being forced to pay bribes of basically insignificant amounts to get done what has to be done. So the country is not the easiest place to visit.
But before I send all of you back for your airline refunds, let me tell you of some wonderful experiences we had.
The problem of soroche, or altitude sickness, is overrated. We first went to Sucre, a beautiful, clean and intellectual city at 9,400 feet. We went to a village for a Sunday market at 10,500 to Potosi at 13,350 and eventually settled in La Paz at 11,900. Soroche feels a little like a hangover without the stomach problems. More like a dull headache. You don't move too fast in the altitude and you take lots of rest stops the first few days, but we didn't meet anyone who was confined to bed, as the books suggest.
In Sucre, we went to a football game, Bolivian style. It is a small town of 50,000 rabid fans who love to go to the game because the stands are about 10 feet from the out of bounds line. That means that when the opponents are dribbling the ball down the field they are really confined to the middle of the field, a distinct advantage to the home team. To use the whole field is to court disaster. Bottles, fire crackers (big one) oranges, hot dogs, magazines and any other matter which might be hurled at them can and will. Each near miss is greeted with a resounding cheer from those in the immediate vicinity. A direct hit brings ecstasy to the crowd. You can see real fear in the faces of the opponents when the ball is kicked out of bounds and they have to retrieve it and throw it back in. You have never seen people move so fast in your life.
Potosi is the silver capital of South America. There is one mountain called Cerro Rico, or rich hill, from which they have taken enough silver to build a solid silver bridge from Potosi to Spain. Of course, the Spanish only used the money to build armies in their attempt to dominate Europe and they remain one of the poorest countries even today with all that exploitation.
the life of the miner has changed little in the 400 years plus that they have been brutalized. You can go down into the mines on tours and Carol and I were lucky enough to have a tour by ourselves, and the guide was so happy to be able to give the tour in Spanish rather than have 30 people and have to work through different interpreters, that we got to do many things not on the regular tour. He was amazingly honest with us. These miners work for 8 hours a day solid without a break at 14,000 feet for $2 a day. They work in oppressive heat on their hands and knees in tunnels no more than three feet high without any machinery; only with iron bars and sledge hammers. The life expectancy of the miner is 30 years of age and since they are so poor, they have to live in the housing owned by the mines. When the miner dies, the family is evicted from the homes unless they can find someone else in the family to work in the mines. This means that in order to save the family from being literally kicked into the street, one of the sons ends up working in the mines, and so the viscous circle continues, with little hope for any escape. And I wonder why the Bolivians are so wary of the "Blancos" as we are called. The Spaniards learned long ago that they could get more work out of the Indians by feeding them coca leaves. It dulls the effects of the heat and altitude, and a bag of coca is all the miners take with them into the mines at the beginning of the shift. In this one mountain there are today more than 2,000 individual mines and they have innumerable accidents with all the blasting going on. In fact, in more than 300 years more than 8,000,000 miners have died working in the mines. Potosi remains one of the few places where you can buy dynamite on the street like your could buy aspirin at home. It is a pitiable situation which has changed little from the Spanish time to today.
The Bolivians have a very tough sled. They are ruled by a 5% minority of European stock who are extremely corrupt and perpetuate their rule through exclusion of the mestizos and Indians. In the middle are the 25% mixed blood mestizos and on the bottom are the 70% pure Indians. The infant mortality rate is s35% in the first year and the life expectancy of the nation as a whole is 51. Only 40 percent of the children who are school age (7-14) go to school and when you consider the percentages of mestizos, it is not difficult to see exactly who gets the short end of the educational, and therefore, financial stick.
There is potential for improvement for the Indians in the eastern provinces, but they have adapted to the high climates, their ancestors have lived there for thousands of years, and they are susceptible to disease in the jungle. The people in the lowlands don't like them anyway, and after all that has happened to them, why should they suddenly begin to trust the authorities?
It is not an encouraging situation for literally millions of poverty stricken people. A lot of them deal with it by having a lot of children. I swear every woman seems to be pregnant and has a baby wrapped in a shawl slung over her back. They then farm out those children who survive the infant mortality rate to work in cities. One absolutely adorable little girl of about 7 was a waitress in a village we visited. She was actually one of the lucky ones. She worked for restaurant owners who insisted that she go to school every day and work after school hours. They called her "La hormiguita" or the little ant, because she was always scurrying about doing things. The owner's husband was a doctor but was forced to retire by government policy at 65. Here he is living in a remote Indian village where there is no medical care, and he is prohibited from providing it by official policy. And again, I wonder why the Indians are not overly friendly.
Like I said, the situation is not encouraging.
Enough reality. The following story is factually true, some small subjective details have been changed so as not to get in the way of a good story.
While in Potosi I was very sick. So much so that we had to call a doctor to come to the hotel. My diarrhea was uncontrollable and the medicine which we brought with us was not effective. The doctor conversed with Carol and I noticed just the hint of a smile on her face as she listened. He said some thing about the nalgas. He left ($14 for the house call) and Carol left to get the medicine he recommended. She came back with a bag full of pills, liquids, vials with rubber tops, and at last she pulled out of the bag a very big and long needle. It was then that she informed me that she was supposed to give me three shots a day until I felt better. Well, I felt better immediately! We then had this long debate which had to do with the fact that she has given shots to her horse, her sheep, her dog, and after all, I was just another large animal. She insisted that this was not her idea, but was what the doctor had ordered, and she was just following his instructions. But there was something in her eyes and the only slightly concealed glee in her voice which suspected that we were not just dealing with doctor's orders. I mean, talk about a way to redress past grievances. I admitted that I had been a real jerk on occasions, but there must be a better way to et even. In the end, I persisted and, in fact, did recover without the shots, but she is not an easy woman to dissuade when she has her mind set.
Another remedy which the doctor recommended was mate de coca, basically a tea made with the leaves of the coca plant. It relaxes the stomach and is bought and sold openly in the markets everywhere. They even sell it in tea bags. It helps with soroche and became our drink of choice with meals. It is really different to look at the drug problem down here from the South American's vision. First of all, it is a cultural thing. The coca leaf is not refined in cocaine down here for local consumption, but for medicinal purposes as I have explained. There are farmers who have grown it in their families for hundreds of years. It is the only crop which will grow in many of the areas, and to stop them from growing it is to create even more financial hardship in a people already desperately poor. The governments have had hundreds of years to do something for these people and have done very little but evil. Many of the drug traffickers have built hospitals, roads, schools, and have provided an income for the people. Who do you thing they are going to trust. We come down here with our narcotic task forces, burn fields, bomb roads, shoot people and expect that our problems will be solved. These people down here do not need this kind of help. Until we solve our problems in our own country, we cannot expect the peasants of South America to bear the brunt of our illness.
We went on to La Paz which at 11,900 feet was a piece of cake at this time. We got there just n time for a wonderful 12 hour parade called La fiesta del Grand Poder. It is the poor people's parade. Indians from all over Bolivia come and dance, sing, and parade in a stunning display of Indian folklore. It is absolutely mind-boggling. In Bolivia, if you have a camera you must be somebody important, and if you have a video camera then you must be a member of the press. No press credentials are necessary. Because of this, I was able to wander right in the middle of the parade with swishing skirts, demons, and thousands of costumed paraders brushing by me as I blissfully filmed. We were totally blown-away after 4 hours of the whole thing and we saw only a small portion of the total. It is something I will never forget.
La Paz is set in the middle of a huge bowl with ridges of the mountains on three sides. They are called the eyebrows of the city. A beautiful mountain illimani rises on the fourth side and it is truly a beautiful city.
We went out to a small town called Copacabana on Lake Titicaca and communed with the old Inca Gods for a while. We sailed on the lake and visited the Island of the Sun, the Inca spot of creation.
We met a squat, toothless, but wonderfully pleasant Indian woman selling "Mystical" potions, herbs, and idols of Incan lore on the streets of La Paz. She sold us a variety of statuettes to which we could pray for success- one for health, one for love, one for travel, etc. Obviously, the god to which she prayed was the god of business, because before we left, we had dropped $20. We were going to buy just a couple, but, no, we had to have this one and then that one, and in the end she didn't have change, and therefore, why didn't we just take this one too and she would throw in another couple and the whole thing would come out even, right? She is what we would call a witch in English, but it doesn't have the negative connotation in Incan tradition. The whole experience was worth more than the money spent.
We had a number of official tasks which had to be taken care of. In Potosi Carol had her purse stolen. A moments lack of caution, and it was gone. It is so hard to be constantly on the watch for someone too close to you, or following you, or to keep your hands physically on everything you own for every moment, it was inevitable that something would happen. The stories which pass from traveler to traveler never hinge on whether they got robbed, but where did they get you, or what did you lose. One German couple got robbed six times. You can't let it spoil your trip, but Carol's loss certainly hurt. Most of the stories centered on luggage being stolen, so we took all the valuables from Carol's suitcase and the had them in her purse. We lost her passport, camera, used rolls of film, $150, some unset jewels which we had purchased in Brazil and which she really loved, airline tickets, and worst of all, for it cannot be replaced, her address book with the names and addresses of all the wonderful people whom we have met down here. It made for a couple of very bad days and nights. That is why Carol had to bribe an official to make a police report which she had to have to get her passport replaced. It was only $5, but she was already none to pleased and to pay the police was the kicker. In the end we decided that since Peru is the worst for theft, we would bail out, change our schedule and head for Ecuador and school. We had always intended to come here for school anyway, but just changed our schedule about.
We bought our airline tickets from La Paz to Quito, Ecuador with a day stop over in Lima to drop off some luggage at the South American Explorers Club of which we are members. This would mean that all our valuables would be safely stored and since we return home from Lima on the 10th of August, we could pick up our luggage then. It meant much less to watch and we are so tired of lugging everything around it would mean much easier traveling. Our tickets were for the flight at 11 at night. Dutifully, we got to the airport at 8:00 p.m. to give ourselves lots of check-in time. However, on arriving at the counter we were greeted by blank stares. Flight? What flight? There is no flight tonight. There was a flight at 11 this morning, but none tonight. There is a flight at 11 tomorrow night, but not tonight. Well, I was pissed. The girls at the office had screwed the whole thing up. We had to re-book our tickets, which meant that we left at 11 the next night, and since the only flight to Quito left the following morning and not for three more days, we 1. were stuck at the Lima airport to sleep on the marble floor for the 7 hour layover, they don't have chairs in the airport lounge; 2, we were still lugging all of our baggage around, and 3, we still run the risk of losing irreplaceable items, and 4, I was so pissed I didn't sleep that night in La Paz and couldn't sleep on the floor at the airport, and so guess who got sick again.
Like I said, Bolivia is the toughest to travel.
But now, we are firmly ensconced in a beautiful home with a wonderful family in Quito while we attend school, and all those problems seem so far away. Next week we go to the Galapagos for a week, then to the jungle for another week before traveling to Peru for the last leg. I will write one more letter to you all before returning home. We were told by my cousin, Bill, that Ecuador was the real sleeper of South America, and he was right. We have so much to write about this land, but that must come later.