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!!!
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!!!
posted by Vesna at 4:10 PM
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