Welcome to Bolivia

October 18, 2011

My tour guide took me aside yesterday morning and told to me to be discreet about being an American and about talking about the United States once we entered Bolivia later that morning. “They don’t have a problem with you, per se, but they have a problem with your government and it’s best to keep quiet about your nationality.” Being Peruvian, he was in a similar boat, but a little worse because evidently Bolivians don’t like the government or the people of Peru. (He was so scared his things would be confiscated at the border he left his phone and camera in Puno!)

Goodbye, Peru!

Something's missing on this seat belt!

 We had a very uneventful bus ride to the border of the two countries. At the border, everyone had to disembark to go through customs and immigration. Bolivia only requires citizens of four countries to obtain visas to enter, and the USA is one of them. So, while the rest of my group breezed through the immigration line, I was at a table in the back of the office filling out paperwork. I had been told beforehand that I needed a copy of my passport and $132 for the visa, which I had. When I got to the front of the line, however, the immigration officer asked me if I had two pictures of myself and gestured toward a little box he had on his desk with one of those rainbow bordered arcade pictures of a non-smiling blonde. (I had actually been wondering about the picture earlier—it definitely looked like one of those pictures you take with your friends, but the girl looked very serious. What a strange picture to have of your girlfriend, I was thinking.) Anyway, he didn’t seemed to bothered by my lack of pictures, but when I paid for my visa with $140, he only gave me $5 back—the rest he kept in exchange for no pictures.  Nice. I’d given a bribe.

Now, I felt like my integrity had been bent a little with this. At the same time, I don’t think there is anything I could have done about it, so I’ll get over it. I’m just glad he let me in the country and he didn’t take more!

After passing through immigration, we were transferred from our bus to minivans for a 10 minute ride, then we all got back on a bus again for another 10 minutes, and then our group was moved to yet another bus for a 5 minute ride that took us to a hotel in the city of Copacabana, a beautiful city on Lake Titicaca, where we had lunch.

An hour later we were on the bus again settling in for our three hour ride to La Paz. There were four non-GAP people on the bus with us, two of whom were a 50-something couple from California. David and Eve were very nice, but Eve talked just a little too loudly and was quite excitable—the type of traveler that gives Americans the reputation we have abroad.

Scenery from the bus!

 The sun was out and the scenery was beautiful. We were driving past a particularly picturesque spot when our bus pulled over behind several other tour buses. How convenient for pictures! Unfortunately, in front of those buses was a group of protestors blocking the road. The bus driver explained that the people in the road were having a “meeting” and that we could get out and stretch our legs. Our group was fine with the little break and the opportunity to take pictures in this spot, and we started to gather our things. However, as I was getting my camera out of my backpack, in front of me I heard Eve start to panic quite loudly, “David, what about my medicine? What about my medicine? What are we going to do?”

View of the protest from the bus

Protest

At this point, as mean as it may sound, I was beginning to be a little amused at the stereotypical nature of the scene that was developing, and I assumed by her mannerisms that Eve was taking something for anxiety. I just got out of the bus and took a few photos.

View once we got off the bus :)

More views from our holding position

Ten minutes passed and everyone was chatting on the road. David and Eve struck up a conversation with me. Again, they were perfectly pleasant people, but during the conversation, Eve kept making these gasping sounds. It turns out that she thought she developed asthma when she had gotten lost and consequently spent a much longer time on a hike at altitude than she was planning to the day before. Now, I understand that it’s scary to feel like you can’t breathe, and there definitely is less air at Lake Titicaca than there is in Sacramento, but it was pretty doubtful that she was suffering an asthma attack. Be that as it may, David went to see if he could find medicine for her while Eve and I continued to chat.

Another ten minutes passed and Eve got back on the bus. Clearly she was distressed, and I tried talking to her to help her calm down. (She said talking helps her relax—it makes her feel like she’s at a cocktail party.) Unfortunately, despite the talking, she was just getting more and more worked up. David did manage to find an inhaler for her to use, which she did (against the recommendations of the pharmacist in our group), but that didn’t seem to alleviate her breathing sounds.

An hour passed, and then two, but the protesters were still in the road. Our bus driver gave us periodic updates, after which Eve would loudly bombard him with questions he couldn’t answer.  Finally, my friend Aaron and I decided to go down to the protest to check things out.

The man holding the white paper in the right is the mayor.

The proceedings were actually pretty neat to see. The protestors were gathered in a circle and the mayor of the town was calling on people to speak either in favor or against letting the tour buses through. My Spanish isn’t that good, but I could make out the gist of some of the speeches, including our bus driver’s, in which he explained that we had a very sick lady aboard and that the problem the protestors had was with the government, not the tourists that were going to bring business to La Paz. Several more people spoke, and then, two and a half hours after we originally stopped, the mayor declared that they would open the road for five minutes.

Waiting to pass

 At this announcement all the vehicle owners started sprinting back to their cars. Aaron and I were about a quarter mile away from our bus, and we started booking it as well once we realized what was happening. There was a mad dash of drivers trying to make it past the protest point and our bus started moving before we got there. Fortunately, it did stop for us to get on. (I will say that although I caught my breath alright, my lungs were burning for a good 20 minutes after that sprint. It’s amazing what air can do for you!) 

We were off again! Fortunately, once we started driving Eve’s breathing got better and she was in a much better mood. (David even offered use of his chapstick to everyone on the bus. No one took him up on it.) Our last stop before La Paz was 20 minutes later when we got off the bus and crossed the narrowest part of the lake in a motor boat while the bus was ferried across. The remainder of the trip took much longer than it would have earlier because of traffic, but we reached our hotel by 8:30 that evening.

Crossing the lake

Our bus crossing the lake

Views from the road again

It's hard to tell, but there are snow-capped
mountains in the distance.

 Because we were all tired from the trip we decided to eat in the “Authentic Thai, Indian, and Japanese” restaurant in the hotel. Having “authentic” food from three countries, none of which was Bolivia, should have made me think twice before I ordered sushi, but the pictures on the menu looked so tasty. I won’t make that mistake again. (And, not only was the food mediocre at best, there was a good 45 minutes between the first and last person being served their dinner. Oh well…)

The night ended at “The Hard Rock” (a knock-off) as the first leg of the tour was ending and four people were leaving the group the next morning. I ordered a very delicious looking brownie to make up for my disappointing dinner, but unfortunately, as one of my friends put it, it tasted like meat. At least the company was good.

It looked so good!

What a day!