Off from La Paz

A quick one. In an internet cafe in La Paz, where a man with a beret, oddly similar to Che Guevara, won't give us more than a few minutes. So, to answer you Marcelo, my faithful friend and post-er, there were no trannies inside the prison, since wives and girlfriends (and probably prostitutes) are allowed in on a regular basis. So the guys get to exercise their libidos a plenty.

Right now, a drunken man is abusing his girlfriend over the phone in the internet cafe, which also doubles as a call centre. He's shouting nasty things into the receiver, in between coughing fits. Now he's saying that he's far too emotional and is aplogising to Che. Ah. The emotional ones are the worst. Che is going into the phone box to disinfect the receiver, after the drunken guy's emptied his tuberculosis-ridden lungs of their plentiful phlegm onto the phone. He's gone. A snipped of a Bolivian borrachero.

Today we went to the witchcraft market, where dried up llama foetuses are sold in many numbers. Also, dried up, blown up frogs are sprinkled with gold dust and sold too. The llama foetuses are to be sacrificed to pachamama (earth mother, the goddess of the Indigenous people) and the frog's for good luck. You're supposed to stuff a fag in its mouth, to appease it and make it bring you lots of lovely luck. We didn't buy any, for fear of arrests at the border.

Now it's good night and good luck. Early tomorrow, we fly to Trinidad, in the Amazonian Basin. Will post from there. Lorra love to all.

San Pedro Prison

What a day. A day to feel like Johnny Cash performing in prison, only without the actual performance. Having read about this mad prison in the middle of La Paz, a prison with no guards, uniforms or official order, we decided we had to go and visit the place whatever it took. So we flashed our most useful BBC passes at moustachioed guards for a few days and were promised by a guy (who seemed completely bonkers) that we´d be able to go for a visit today at 11am. We presented documents, desires, and all they asked for, and turned up this morning outside the prison. Inside, we could see rough looking blokes queuing nervously at the gate. It was visiting day. Chollas, the ladies with bowler hats I mentioned in a previous blogué, waited outside with snotty children, and at their feet packages of fruit, veggies, cake boxes and other goodies waited to be sacrificed to the hungry prisoners. They were looking at us intently and I was starting to regret my curiosity. Who in the hell wants to visit a prison? But it was too late. Our Bolivian attendant, a low official with a handlebar moustache and darkened glasses, approached and escorted us through the gate. Our passports were taken by green-uniformed guards (they are called ´Avocados´in the prison jargon) and I thought that this might be it. We too might be sacrificed like the veggies and the cakes. A pair of gringos with expensive equipment. What more could you want for bargaining advantage?

Inside, the place looked like a little town. The prison is divided into 8 areas, all named and centred around a patio, with small balconies where geezers played poker and whatever else, whilst checking out the goings on below. You see, in this prison, as I said, there are no guards. Everything is decided and controlled by the prisoners themselves, who elect their leaders and have unions. There are no uniforms and families are allowed in every day to hang out with their husbands/fathers/uncles, whatever, and many women come to cook at the stands. The prisoners have to rent their own cells, or buy them, and some cost as much as 150 dollars a month, depending on how de luxe they are. So the prisoners have to work whilst inside, to pay for their cells and food and clothes. They work as cooks, carpenters, they sell sweets and whatever else and that´s how they make their living.
Richer prisoners have large cells, pads really, with cable TV and all the lovely things. Others, like the cell of a man we visited, have a 1x1 metre cell, with a bed, cooker and mirror. A bit like a room I once rented in Harlesden, really, as a student. I felt for the guy. His walls were covered in rose bloom wallpaper, with ´Florita Durango 7122543´ penned on it in small writing. A lady friend, so delicate next to the roses. The ceiling was plastered with a hundred time replica of a cowboy hat and ´Minnesotta´ on it. He was in for drug smuggling, cocaine, like 90% of the prisoners. He seemed to think he was innocent and seemed like a nice guy, really. We wished him luck and left him to his cell.

Downstairs, a proper loonie started offering his wisdom and asking money for it. Rafa got him to tell us his story. His face looked like a swollen potato with a wig. His nose was squashed and I swear had white coke rings on the edges of his nostrils. He was in for murder, he said. We gulped in unison. He then started talking about justicia, and how he needs to be free, and did some marvellous dancing when Rafa snapped him on the camera. All the other prisoners laughed their heads off when he started posing like a professional model, and our guide whispered in my ear: ´He´s drunk´. No kidding. He´s mad, more likely, and high as a kite.

We met a South African guy, softly spoken and gentle seeming. He said his was a long story, but that he´d messed around with trafficking and paf! he was arrested. I guess that´s what most people´s stories are like in San Pedro.

What was really sad was the fact that children live there, with their arrested parents. They live inside and go out to school, where they are discriminated against, as is to be expected. They are also in danger inside the prison. Apparently girls get molested and the poor little things live in constant fear. They were sweet, playing there, all snotty and unkempt, with red cheeks and black, marble eyes. There are two creches inside, and a kindergarten too.

Visits for tourists were once a big business for the prisoners, but they are now forbidden. Apparently, the tourists, or gringos as we are otherwise known here, got into the high quality cocaine that is sold and snorted in great quantities inside San Pedro. They were coming in on tours and buying the drugs, which the guards and officials somehow worked out and now you can only visit if you have a mate inside, or you´re a journalist.

One of the guys sold us his ´Prison Manual´which has a collection of prison jargon: a mixture of Argentine Lunfardo and street jargon called Coba (the explanation reads: The Coba jargon was compiled by the International Delinquent Expert, alias the Pecos, the international Boy of the heavy Signature ´The Gallant´ - very cool stuff). Just a couple of quotations of the words:
1. Uniformed policemen (as I wrote before) - Avocados (I assume this is because they wear green uniforms), Marios;
2. Street thieves - Callejeros (calle-street in Spanish), Palomillos, Pandilleros;
3. Bus thieves - Carreros;
4. Hat thieves - Cumbreros Cachucheros (the bowler hats that the women wear are mightily pricey for Bolivian standards, second-head can be flogged for as much as 80 dollars - I reckon a Cumbrero is a perversion of Sombrero - any suggestions?)
5. Bank - Coban (Banco - a bit like our Satrovacki in the former Yugoslavia, where syllables are switched)
6. (my favourite, it´s so silly) Trousers - Tolan Lompa (Pantalones, kind of mixed up)
They also have words to mean wallet, pocket (trouser, jacket, skirt) and so on, which the author explained, serves as a little technique for communication between themselves when they are pickpocketing people, so that policemen or anyone else can´t understand. Smart, eh?

Anyway, we were glad to get out into the relatively safer world outside, where a tramp was retching into a gutter, around the corner from the prison. It kind of complemented the whole atmosphere.

I forgot, Rafa and I played chess during the many hours of waiting for our visiting permit. I tried to call on my fellow Slav Gary Kasparov´s spirit, but to no avail. I lost the first game, but was about to check-mate Rafa when our permits arrived. Just thought I´d let you know that now we are chess nerds for a few days, till we get bored with concentrating.

Thank you Marcelo, for posting a comment on the blogg. I appreciate it, since more and more, every day I feel more and more lonely on me blogg, when I see the sad 0 comments below my writing. Sob, sob.

All strange and high

4000 metres. That´s how high I am. And man, do I feel high. Ah. My lungs are wheezing, my nose is dry as a llama´s butt, and my contacts are impossible to remove from the eyeballs at the end of the day.

Since my last blogski, we´ve been to Sucre, a lovely town that means Sugar and is as sweet as, if not sweeter, with lots of colonial architecture and Spanish style churches, which makes Rafa gloat, in a kind of post-colonial, post-post-colonial way. And Bolivia has started to look more and more like it does on the pictures. You know, the ladies wear long plaits that are tied together at the bottom, a bowler hat sloped to the side, a baloon skirt underneath a flowery apron that ties at the back. And as the altitude gets higher, so it gets colder, and there are additions of footless leggings, wooly socks, and llama wool blankety scarves that are worn over the shoulders and pinned at the chest. Basically, it´s a kind of traditional Andean chic that could seriously catch up on the streets of London any time soon. I´ve already bought a little bowler for myself and am planning to wear it in Covent Garden, so no giggling and pointing when you see me, please.

Our trip got a serious injection of adrenalin two days ago, when we headed to Potosí, the highest town in the world. We got a ´trufi´(shared taxi) with two ladies who spoke in such tiny, quiet voices that I just nodded and smiled like a gringette whenever they said something. I sat in the middle on the back seat with a clear view of the driver´s drooping eyelids in the rearview mirror. He was driving at 100 kmph, around us was nothing but sheer drops and bare mountains, and he was rubbing his eyes and yawning, and sticking his head out of the window to stay awake. I was closely monitoring him. In fact so closely that I started to imagine our bodies crashed against the romantic Andes. My palms sweating and my heart beating faster than a German techno tune, I transmitted my nerves onto Rafa who also started to monitor the driver in a panic. The crescendo of the panic, after which I decided to let destiny take place if it needed to, was when we approached a lorry at 2 centimetres and 12o kmph speed, with the driver seemingly having no intention to overtake but just crash straight into the lorry. Rafa shouted ´Jefe!´, the driver woke up and overtook the lorry at such a last-minute turn of the wheel that I suddenly understood all those people who pee themselves from fear in the movies. I mean, I didn´t pee myself, but I nearly did. It can be safely said that that was the scariest moment in my life, barring the time when I first stepped on a pair of roller skates, but let´s not go there.

Some small prayers and a sudden turn to Christianity later, we arrived in Potosí, where dozens of locals were sitting in the middle of the streets, blocking the traffic, protesting against taxes. They just sat there, and looked defiant. The women in the taxi were saying ´ay ay ay ay´ a lot. We kept asking porque the people were camping out in the middle of the road, but the ladies answered in their tiny voices, saying nothing in particular. The taxi driver said nothing, but looked more awake, luckily for the people sitting in the streets. Finally, we were chucked out at the bus station, where women were hollering in high pitched voices, shouting town names (bus destinations) in a kind of song, so Oruro, a nearby town, sounded like: ´Oru-uuu-u-r-oo! Ooo-ru-rooo!´repeated a million times. Hungry dogs were sniffing our shoes. Toilets were perfuming the air with l´eau d´pee pee. Little boys were offering to clean our shoes, that the dogs had sniffed. It was chaos. And the altitude was adding a sense of dizzy mist, kind of isolating the brain from the picture and noises that surrounded us. So, breathless and weirded out, we walked around Potosí, being repeatedly invited to take part in the protests, since, they seemed to claim, we owed it to them, as tourists. Rafa politely declined waving the Bolivian flag, saying he needed to pee before joining the revolution. The toothless women laughed and all was merry.

We took the bus to La Paz, Bolivia´s capital, yesterday. We met this really nice Belgian guy who looks like Cristopher Walken, in Santa Cruz, and have been meeting him in every single place we´ve travelled to since. It´s as yet unclear who´s following whom. I think he´s following us, since we´re certainly not following him. But then, he ´s with his parents, and they would never put up with anyone following anyone else. So, having met the Belgian guy in Potosí too, we took the same bus to La Paz. Inside the bus, coca leaves were strewn on the floor, dropped by the driver who chews the stuff on the 11 hour overnight trip. Water and juice sellers invaded the bus, advertising everything from sweets to salami in that singalongy way that Bolivians seem to advertise everyting: ´Coooompra el aguaaa! Cooompra!´ Suddenly this guy came on the bus, introduced himself as The Busker, and started singing little folk songs, which were quickly learned and embraced by Rafa and moi, but I don´t think the busker appreciated our entusiasm. Then he sang, in a kind of Andean rapper style: ´You may be wondering who I am, Is he a criminal? Is he a thief? And I was a criminal and a thief, But I got out of it all, The competition in the streets was too fierce, So now I sing for a living, Señor Pasajero (Mister Traveller), Give me a bit of money, You see this bus, It´s very modern, It has Panasonic TV, And good speakers too, The bus driver is single, Ladies, and he´s got balls like King Kong, Plus the cleaner makes this place sparkle every day, Señor Pasajero, Give me a peso!´
Of course, we gave him a peso.

The bus crew entertained its passengers with a dubbed version of a Kung Fu movie, Above the Law, followed by jolly Andean tunes at eardrum bursting volume. The Belgian guy saved the day, night, by getting up and switching the TV off. Everyone was grateful.

We arrived in La Paz at 6am, looked for a hotel for 1/2 hr, everything full or ugly, finally found an acceptable place, got ripped off by the taxi driver and went to sleep. The city is a crazy place where shoe polish guys wear balaklavas and cap visors and look like phantom menaces. Apparently it´s to avoid social stigma, since they support their families by cleaning shoes, or put themselves through university. The job is clearly not cool among the students. After all this socio-sensitive explanation of their outfits, we saw them playing a game of football on the town square, balaklavas off and everything, and they were still so obviously the shoe cleaning guys, but I suppose even social stigma can go to hell when it´s boiling hot. The guys who weren´t playing were still wearing the balaklavas. Most curious. On Thursday we´re going to visit a prison which is a whole society in itself, in the middle of La Paz.

When we sat in a bar for a coffee ´Take my breath away´was on the radio . We smiled and sang along, breathless.

p.s. Come on guys, send some comments!!!

Bolivian bino

Just thought I´d surprise everyone with two posts in two days.
Despite the fact that both R and I are bro and sis of Rudolph the Raindeer (avec la red nose), we went for a wine (vino - pronunced ´bino´ in Spanish) tasting session this morning with a tour agency. Did you know that Bolivian wine is grown at an altitude of 2,100 metres? And that the altitude helps ripen the grapes and produce wine faster? Closer to the sun, apparently. On that note, we´ll probably age 2 days in 1 while we´re here.

Bolivian wine is all young and shy, though some is a little bitter about its youth and lack of status, so it bites your tongue like a vicious little panda. A man described a wine today (a bad wine) like a paw of a puma that reaches into your insides and rips them out. Wouldn´t wanna taste that one.

We went to this very old house in a village, where a gold-toothed lady produces sweet wine in oaky barrells, a business her father started when someone gave him two barrells as debt pay-off. He thought: ´What should I do with a pair a´barrells? Well, make some wine, of course.´So he got some campesinos (peasants, seljaci) to get their smelly socks off, get some wellies on and start stamping on their grapes, producing a slightly acidic sweet wine in three shades, sold to an eager village public. The old house is made of mud and hay and any kind of stuff that was hangin´ about on the floor and it´s a beautiful place that looks like you´re back in 1583, Andean pipe music and all. Little Bolivians walked past us carrying plates with a mountain of massive yellow corn and big pork ribs and we were dying to try some, but had to go.

Our driver later said that the gold-toothed lady, somewhere in her 50s, liked muchachos jovenes (young boys) since her husband wasn´t ´serving her no more´. I looked at Rafa and wondered if he was young enough. He said she´d given him a wink or two, but nothing more.

Afterwards, we went for a massive pork buffet in a garden restaurant and ate like porkies. Tomorrow, to Sucre, on a Bolivian military aircraft with some horny old geezers who were sighing deeply over young muchachas who walked past the office while we were getting our tickets. Should be an adventure. The bloody cold isn´t going away. Anyone got any remedies?

p.s. Helena, didn´t manage to sort out the wireless thing, my computer doesn´t have it, so I´ll have to get it installed. So backward, I am.
Mirna J, I am back in London on 13 August. Are you going to be around?

Lots of love to all.

Finally, a blog. A week´s worth.

Hello everyone and sorry for this week-long silence, which I´d promised to fill with excitement and hilarity. I´ve failed miserably, but I´ll try to restore my reputation. In truth, I´ve been thinking about the blog every step of the way, trying to weigh out what´s blog-worthy and what not, and haven´t really decided on an answer, so you´ll surely let me know whether I am stepping over any personal information boundaries (you wish!).

Santa Cruz, our first point was a massive city that felt like a Bosnian village, with the addition of funnily dressed Bolivians - that would be strange in Bosnia, I suppose - and people selling orange juice, raisins, whole pigs´ heads and salteñas, a Bolivian sausage roll type things, which taste of sweet curry. We befriended a bunch that runs a gay bar/theatre/concert venue and ate llama steaks, which are bloody marvellous! Might kidnap a llama and bring it back to London. Will invite all for a feast if I manage to get it to pretend to be a fluffy toy and get it past the border guards.

Doing the Lonely Planet thing here is interesting. Most people have no idea what LP is (as is the case with most of my jobs) so Rafa and I are regarded with suspicion and eyed from head to toe. Information is given with a squint at my battered notebook which has ´Travel Journal´ printed on it in cute letters. I probably look like Heidi with a Michael Palin complex to them. Though I doubt that Michael Palin is known here. But you get the picture. The problem is, I used to make notes in a black notebook, and people thought I was a tax inspector. They used to be even more suspicious.

As for crazy adventure, I must report the exciting incident of riding three on a motorbike with a Bolivian moto-taxi bloke, who unwittingly let himself in for a three hour ride to a jungle hotel. We drove down a dirt track road, me on the back, my ass killing me, Rafa in the middle, shouting jokes in the guy´s ear and offering more money the longer the journey turned out to be. Ah, the beauties of hotel research. There was no mention of a 1.5km walk through the jungle to get to the hotel, in the existing review. We walked, with the moto-taxi guy who was to drive us back, the heat felt like being wrapped in a pissed on, wet duvet, the mosquitos were biting through our jumpers, other, unnamable (is that a word?) insects were going for our extremities with all their might. But no hotel. Finally, some cabins appeared. ´Hola!´ ´Hello!´ we yelled. No one. Trying to locate non-insect life. Finally, out of a far-away cabin an ´Hola´ was heard. We walked towards the place and I stared at a mosquito net covering a window, trying to see inside. I couldn´t see a thing. It was all dark. Suddenly, a woman´s voice: ´por favor!´ she screamed. A man in a towel wrapped around his waist got close to the net, and we could see that he was old, wore a grey pony tail and had wrap-around hair that is meant to conceal bald patches. He spoke in a sarf London accent: ´Can you wait down by the gate please?´ We´d caught them shagging. It seemed to both of them I´d been staring at them relentlessly though the mosquito net. ´We´re from the Lonely Planet´ I said, voice quivering.

We also met a fair number of New Agers here, as is the rule with most LP research and hostel world. One guy, who shan´t be named in case I get sued for slander (or libel?), told me I need to let go of my wartime experiences and that that was why I had got a furious cold and my stomach ached. Apparently, he said, that all the letters which had been written to me during the war in Bosnia, and which I still keep, should be burned and the energy from the letters sent back to those who wrote them. My digestive system should be working better after that. Might try it. Will invite all for bonfire and stomach monitoring. Oh, and apparently, despite the fact that I am ´physically petite´ (he was 2 metres tall), I am spiritually ´a fucking house´. Those were the very words he used. Rafa said that that should help us save money on accommodation. Perhaps I should start renting.

Anyway, both R and I now have massive colds due to my emotional baggage. Damn the Bosnian war. We´ve spent the last two days trying to recover before heading out to Sucre, at 3000 metres, and La Paz at 4000, from which I´ll send mad, coca-leaf chewing, dizzy emails and blogs. I promise.

I´ve been watching the Lebanon - Israel war (I suppose that´s what it is). It´s unbelievable. A CNN report on rescuing Americans from Beirut showed poor American citizens having champagne cocktails on board of a cruise ship. ´At least they can carry on their holidays,´ the producer spoke. I am happy Aida´s family is ok. Vito, is Katia´s family all right?

This is it. A week´s worth. Kisses to all.

Just to say Hvala, Merci, Thank you to all my lovely friends who've already posted on this blogster. Mirna is, I am pretty sure, Mirna Jancic, who is not my sister (though she is a 'sista' in the women's lib kind of way), but I am sure my sister Mirna (also known as Schwester Hildegard) will be posting and saying hello to Bojan and Anne too.
I've just spent three hours trying to retrieve my username for this blog. I thought my blogging career was already over. But, phew, I remembered it. Off I go. Bon voyage to me and you.

Start of a journey

Hi everyone. This blog - though I've been known as the arch enemy of all things bloggy - has been set up by me as a kind of diary of my trip to Bolivia, for my friends to see how exciting my travelling life is (or not). I hope that people will write to me and that humorous comments will be lovingly posted all round (hopefully not at my expense).
So, the trip starts tomorrow night. Iberia is having pilot strikes and our flight is not affected, which is good. If Opodo is mistaken about this, the blog may be written entirely from an airport.