Bolivia (two months late) is not a Destination Resort

I am really going to attempt to get myself up to date over the next couple of weeks. A lot has happened since Peru.

Into Bolivia - Hardcore, Third World

After separating and following my near death by poisoning in Peru, my Dutch friend, Roos, and I wanted to hook up and travel through Bolivia together. My first experience with Bolivia was when I tried to get into the country. No problem for the other 80 people on my bus because they were all European. The US government has not been very nice to Bolivia. Combine that with a totally crooked government lead by the only indigenous leader in the Americas who also has a serious ax to grind and you have a formula for all kinds of border crossing fun for US citizens. For starters, we have to pay $130 to enter the country and get a special adhesive stamp placed in our passports. Everyone else gets in free. Secondly, we have to fill out five forms, one of them declaring that we are not in the US military or with the CIA. As the Euros were breezing through customs, I was in the interrogation room with good cop/bad cop asking me questions about my intentions for coming into the country. With everyone (except lone American) back on the bus waiting to cross, all of my paperwork seemed to be in order and now it was time to pay my fee and be on my way. Not so fast. It seems that they only wanted American dollars and they couldn't take credit cards. They also didn't want Peruvian Soles (which I had a sufficient supply of to pay for my visa). I had $40 US and $250 in Soles at the official exchange rate. There was a guy with a little stand selling cigarettes and other stuff who could change my Peruvian money for Bolivianos. But not at the official bank rate of course. I quickly turned $250 into $60 (can you say shakedown) so I was $30 short. I went back to the bus and pleaded for a loan until I could repay in Copacabana and some cool Norwegians came through with a loan (the Dutch, Danish, and Norwegians are now what I consider some of the greatest people on earth). I went back to the customs guys and because I was paying in their home currency and not dollars, there would be a "surcharge." See where this is going? Everyone has now been on the bus for 40 minutes watching me go back and forth and scrambling to get myself across the border. Most of them very amused, a few annoyed. But just about everyone at this point was ready to pitch in and do whatever it took to get me across. I went back to the bus and this time five people followed me off the bus to tell these dickheads to let me in, that I had paid, and were offering to pay them whatever their stupid "surcharge" was. So, with 20 more dollars in their shitty currency in their hands, I was able to get back on the bus to a rousing round of applause and we proceeded on to Copacabana.

Copacabana - No, not THAT Copacabana

The bus takes you directly from Puno, Peru to Copacabana in Bolivia, which is also on Lake Titicaca. In terms of geography, they are identical. And even though Peru is poor and Puno is a poor part of Peru, you can sense that Bolivia is even poorer as soon as you enter. This is true even though Copacabana is a bit of a tourist/traveler hub. And although this is the case, Copacabana is much more charming than Puno. It's a much smaller town and it seems like they are really trying. Some of the lodging is of very good value and I even found a place that served a mean American breakfast. My friend Roos was paying something like $3 a night for a hostel with breakfast included. And it was actually clean which is more than I can say about many places I/we stayed in Peru.

After getting some cash and finding a room, I went down to the center part of town (I would say downtown but the place is tiny) because I needed to pay back my loans from the passengers on my bus. I felt obliged to buy some beers for their efforts and nobody objected so I paid them back and we threw back some $.50 beers until I could go track down Roos.

I was able to find Roos and of course we decided that we should have more beers. We had been told before Bolivia that the people were awful and really hated gringos. We found this not to be the case, at least in Copacabana. The people were much more civil than the people in Puno, Peru which is where I had come from. Or Peru in general for that matter. The street vendors are not aggressive and not in your face like the Peruvians and the people seem almost amused by your presence as opposed to the feeling from the Peruvians that you are a walking ATM. Anyway, Roos and I decided to go have dinner at one of the restaurants on the main street that leads to the lake, which is where all the backpacker/travelers hang out. The places are geared only for that crowd. In fact, the town has experienced exponential growth in the past five years or so because it is now on the South America circuit. The circuit that I am starting to find annoying (that's another story). We received our first taste of the indifferent and slow Bolivian service which we would experience for the next six weeks as we traveled through the country. As is also normally the case in Bolivia, the food was mediocre at best. Getting a refill on your drink and getting check are next to impossible, another Bolivia trademark. We went out and walked around town and asked a local if their was anywhere we could go for a drink. He said "no, no, no, es MUY tarde" (no, no, no, it's VERY late). It was 9 PM. He was right, everything was closed.

The next day Roos went on a tour to an island on Lake Titicaca and I stayed back to explore town and the surroundings since we were leaving for La Paz the next day. The main attraction in town is the cerro (which translates to a hill but it usually means a pretty significant hill). The town is already at almost 13000 feet and the cerro is about 800 feet straight up from town. Needless to say, it's work getting to the top. I only say this because of what you find when you get there. The cerro itself is a huge rock formation right next to the lake. They have built steps into the rock and there is a Jesus statue or cross on top, I can't remember which. Lots of cerros/high points in Latin America have Jesus or a cross. The Latin Americans are allegedly all Catholic, even though the divorce rate in all of the countries is probably 70% and perhaps half of the children are born out of wedlock which only serves to further undermine my complete disdain for organized religion. Honestly, it's completely meaningless here. I had no idea. I thought the fact that the whole continent was supposedly religious was very significant. It turns out that it's just confusing. The women do actually have to hold themselves to some set of standards but the men can literally do anything they want. So they build giant Jesus statues and big crosses to make everyone feel better. The one thing I wanted to do in town (and the only thing to do unless you go on some kind of tour) was climb the cerro.

The road to the cerro goes straight up out of town and then the cerro itself goes straight up with stone steps cut into the side. The climb up is steep and difficult. Very difficult. The reason I make this point is that you climb and climb up the maze of steps and when you reach the top, you see two of the most unexpected things - vendors and trash. The amount of trash in both Peru and Bolivia is staggering. That is a whole separate story of its own. The scale is immense, especially in the context of how many other places in other countries have the same problem. I've only seen a couple and have tried in my head to extrapolate what I have seen across other parts of the two countries, all of South America, and the rest of the world. Virtually all of it ends up in the ocean at some point. It just can't go on forever with no consequences. It is really something to see and think about. There must be 50 vendors who are selling everything from soft drinks and bottled water (heavy) to really shitty plastic toys. And they have tons of them. I couldn't get over the fact that these people (at least someone) hauled all this stuff up here. There were a fair number of people up there but not enough to justify carrying hundreds of pounds of water and cheap toys up several hundred feet at that altitude. Or any altitude. I guess desperate people will go to desperate measures to make a living. I could understand selling drinks up there - I was pretty happy to see a Gatorade when I got up there. But the toys? If you saw the place, you couldn't help but be puzzled. Apparently a lot of people light candles up there (there are thousands) for loved ones who are sick or perhaps who have recently passed away. The place is supposedly somehow sacred because it has the cross or Jesus statue or whatever it is. I can't remember and my camera that had photos of the place was stolen later in Bolivia.

There are lots of dogs on the streets of Bolivia, just like Peru. Most of them you can take one look at and know that you should avoid contact at all costs. But this dog adopted me as soon as I left my hostel and walked with me all day. It was actually one of the few dogs I had seen that didn't look like they were near death. He just wouldn't leave my side for some reason. And I hadn't fed it. So after going back to my hostel for a while it was time to go meet Roos for dinner. The dog was waiting for me and followed me into town. Pretty funny and relevant to the next part of the story.

Roos and I went to dinner and had another mediocre meal with the usual indifferent service and then found a place to have a drink that was open later than 9 PM. We played some Dutch card game and drank rum late into the night, unsure if we should have been consuming the ice cubes in our drinks. Impossible to get a drink even though there was nobody in the bar. And the bar was FREEZING cold as it was outside. Not a lot of heaters in Bolivia, including my hostel. Or this bar apparently. We left to walk Roos home and there was my new animal companion, waiting in the cold. We went to Roos' hostel and had to knock on the door for 10 or 15 minutes before someone finally opened the door. I left with the dog (we had given it a name but I can't remember it) and began walking the very dark streets of Copacabana. After my Peru experiences, I learned to always carry rocks in these places. A couple blocks down the road, my projectiles would come in handy. As we came to the "main" intersection in town, it was just me, the dog, and the other dogs out on the streets. Three of them saw us coming and just charged. My dog took off and met two of them head on. He immediately sent one off yelping and was tearing apart the other one. The third one was making a b-line for my white ass. I've never had a particularly strong throwing arm but I have always been accurate. I locked and loaded and plowed that motherf**ker right between the eyes. Adios amigo. My dog was chasing his victim down the street as I reloaded just in case. He came running back looking very satisfied with his work. I had leftover pizza which I immediately fed to him as a reward. He escorted me back to my hotel and I wondered if he would be waiting in the morning. I wanted to ship him back to the US. The next morning he was there to walk down to the bus with me. I bought him a bunch of fried trout before I got on the bus to La Paz with Roos. I was sad to leave him behind. I have no idea why he chose to follow me around but dogs are whores so I'm sure he's eating someone else's trout by now.

On to La Paz, a real life third world captial city.