Back in Blighty
We're back in Blighty. In the Big Smoke. Not in the Big Apple, however. Though we were in the Big Puff, as I've chosen to dub Sao Paulo, Brazil's dirty dirty bad boy megalopolis. Me love Brazil now and want to go back and pretend to be Brazilian. I didn't get any Havaianas, before you ask.
I know the blog's supposed to be only about Bolivia (or so the title suggests), but circumstances have made it so that I can now expand to a few other countries too. In fact, I am thinking of keeping the blog going, and noting down things that happen to me in London or wherever else I might go (Essex, for example) that are blogworthy. You can of course choose to ignore me if you don't care to know how I spend my time.
So, our last couple of days in Santa Cruz were spent mostly trying to get Rafa to recover from his ear-throat-sinus infection, and with a bit of Bosnian medicine and some strong antibiotics, he's now as good as new, though he's partially deaf in his right ear, but that's just his age. We spent entire days, in fact, on the patio of the hotel (Hotel Globetrotter!) where the atmosphere was something out of a Tarantino film, minus the blood and gore (does that leave anything?). The following took place:
a) a drunken Kenyan-Indian-British girl sat with us and proceeded to reveal all about her family, which happened to be caught in the midst of a domestic violence wave at the time of our sitting on the patio. The girl was tearful and giggly in turns, eating a tub of Snickers ice cream and being rather annoying. Rafa and I listened and offered sensible advice. Rafa lay on his side the entire time, feeling dizzy from the ear infection. I smoked an occasional cigarette, feeling guilty each time.
b) the hotel owner, a short man with a long history in travel (hence 'Globetrotter') spoke to us extensively of towns where Nazi groups gather in Bolivia annually. You'd be surprised to hear how many there are and how active the descendants of the escaped Nazis are in South America. At least I was surprised.
c) the hotel owner also revealed how, when he lived in Denmark, he used to go to the then-Communist Eastern Europe with his Danish friends, and they used to sleep with women for as little as $1. Or they'd bring a ham, like parma ham, and sleep with women for ham.
d) he then went to the door and started arguing for a long time with a young woman with a baby, saying he refused to give her any money and that she should go. This went on for some time. Rafa and I were captivated by the bizarreness of the dialogue, since the hotel owner was a man with a gentle voice and manner, and being terse with anyone seemed beyond him. Suddenly, after refusing for half an hour, through a little hole in the door, to give her any money, he went to his room and came back holding a note of 50 Bolivianos (roughly 5 pounds) and gave it to her. They carried on speaking as if nothing had happened and were long, loved friends.
Getting out of Bolivia was a tough one. Our Sunday flight was cancelled, so we had to get a Thursday flight instead, with LAB, the Bolivian airline which is going bankrupt. The company is in such a state that they have cardboard piggybanks all around travel agents' offices in town, pleading for 1 Boliviano (10p) to save the company and staff. And our beloved Dial-A-Flight had booked us onto a flight with this sorry company. I called D-A-F (with whom you should NEVER book tickets), asking if they'd known that LAB was going bankrupt when they debited my account, and they pleaded ignorance. I foamed, shouted, banged the phonebox and almost swore at the D-A-F representative. The Bolivians looked at me with a sort of bemusement, a gringa loca, shouting at someone far away.
So, the flight out of Bolivia was on Thursday, and it was Wednesday, so we decided we'd have to say goodbye to the 6 friends we'd made in Santa Cruz. One of them was a woman, part of a couple, who arrived with a cleavage wider than the Grand Canyon, in a long-tried attempt to get Rafa to gaze at the two cannons in her Canyon. She was a friendly girl at first, speaking to me slowly in Spanish, pretending to be interested in whatever I was talking about, but soonafter she turned her interests to R, much to the dismay of her husband, who grew more and more quiet as time went by. Her husband, a photographer, used his camera as a self-defense method, carrying it everywhere and taking more pictures the more nervous he got. In the end he was just snapping the walls. The wife, no longer a friendly female companion for me, started laughing at any mistake I made in Spanish, failing to realise that mistakes are what my Spanish is made of and that is something I am most proud of it. We also met our friend Christopher Walken, who, as some of you might recall, we'd met on most of our journey and befriended.
A friend of the Bolivian couple sat down with us and asked where we were from. We, obedient as schoolkids, went on to announce our origins. When it came to me I said 'Yugoslavia' (Bosnia's pretty much anonymous in those parts). I said 'Yugoslavia' and he heard: 'Yo no se', which means 'I don't know' in Spanish. He looked at me and said: 'You don't know where you are from?' Roars of laughter from everyone (especially the Bolivian girl who, in my now paranoid ears, was doing a Dr Evil roar). 'No, I said, I am from Yu-go-sla-via.' 'Aaaah, Yugohlavia,' said the guy. 'Yeh, Yugohlavia, thah raht.' I thought.
So, with this cocktail of odd friends we spent the last evening in the country, eating llama steaks as should befit a last supper in Bolivia.
Returning to our hotel, the owner informed us that the flight in the morning, the only flight out of Bolivia, was cancelled. LAB had phoned and said that out of their two airplanes, one was in Mexico and the other being repaired. We held our heads and shook them, until a light bulb fizzed inside my head and I decided we should go to the airport and refuse to leave until they put us on a plane to Brazil. Which is what we did. We queued, bright and early, eating a rubbery 'Subway' sandwich (their motto is 'Eat Fresh' - eat fresh, my arse) and sipping tea and coffee into our cardboard throats. The LAB ladies behind the LAB desk looked LABsick. Puppy-dog eyes, a lot of blinking, asking for disculpas. It turned out to be much easier than we'd thought and sooner than you could say feijoada, we were in Brazil. And, thanks to our lovely friend Marcelo, we were staying with a lovely girl by the name of Ana Paula, who let us use her flat and watch Seinfeld as much as we wanted (watching Seinfeld being the ultimate relaxation for me).
Aaah, Brazil! What a change! Young people, most of whom are stunningly, drop-yer-pants beautiful (I must confirm the stereotype) were hanging out in front of walls with trendy graffiti, eating delicious food, drinking cool beer. And not a backpacker in sight. It might have been heaven. So, we ate at street markets, danced a bit of salsa and samba, saw an alternachivoo (alternative) band called something like 'The Sonnet of an Enchanted Fire' (in Portuguese) rocking the birds out of their little nests in the city park, bought some mad sunglasses, looked dodgy in expensive shops that we didn't have the money for, walked around the poverty stricken downtown Sao Paulo where men and dogs lived the same lifestyles, and befriended some damn nice Brazilian people. Rafa was even given a football shirt by a friend of a friend, and we had a Polaroid picture taken with our instant-Brazilian friends. The old guy who sold Polaroids for 10 Reais (1 pound) took the picture, and since there were around 8 of us, he started counting heads on the picture, to make sure we were all there.
And then we flew and flew and flew, screaming children surrounding our seats, one of whom used my leg liberally as his toy-car's motorway. Touching down in London was so lovely and so strange that we had to sit and have a coffee to observe the chaos of the airport. People everywhere carrying everything in transparent plastic bags, thanks to the new post-panic regulations at Heathrow. Laptops in bags, bags in bags, eyeglasses in bags, books in bags, eyes in bags. You could suddenly tell a lot about a person from their hand luggage. How much tissue did they take? Did they use wet-wipes? Was there a toothbrush or chewing gum? A 'Hello' magazine or a Dan Brown book? Ear plugs or iPod? Hotpants?
We arrived at the flat and I couldn't unlock the door. I forgot which way to turn the key. It was like a 20 second paralysis of the brain. What was this door? I had to check the number several times, to make sure I wasn't in fact sticking my keys into my neighbour's door downstairs. And then, voila, the flat. The door was heavy with 5 weeks of post heaped behind it. The dust welcomed us in, making grey flower shapes to show its delight. My fern plant wasn't entirely dead. The potatoes were alive. Happiness. It's nice to be home.
P.S. Will try to attach some pictures now.
I know the blog's supposed to be only about Bolivia (or so the title suggests), but circumstances have made it so that I can now expand to a few other countries too. In fact, I am thinking of keeping the blog going, and noting down things that happen to me in London or wherever else I might go (Essex, for example) that are blogworthy. You can of course choose to ignore me if you don't care to know how I spend my time.
So, our last couple of days in Santa Cruz were spent mostly trying to get Rafa to recover from his ear-throat-sinus infection, and with a bit of Bosnian medicine and some strong antibiotics, he's now as good as new, though he's partially deaf in his right ear, but that's just his age. We spent entire days, in fact, on the patio of the hotel (Hotel Globetrotter!) where the atmosphere was something out of a Tarantino film, minus the blood and gore (does that leave anything?). The following took place:
a) a drunken Kenyan-Indian-British girl sat with us and proceeded to reveal all about her family, which happened to be caught in the midst of a domestic violence wave at the time of our sitting on the patio. The girl was tearful and giggly in turns, eating a tub of Snickers ice cream and being rather annoying. Rafa and I listened and offered sensible advice. Rafa lay on his side the entire time, feeling dizzy from the ear infection. I smoked an occasional cigarette, feeling guilty each time.
b) the hotel owner, a short man with a long history in travel (hence 'Globetrotter') spoke to us extensively of towns where Nazi groups gather in Bolivia annually. You'd be surprised to hear how many there are and how active the descendants of the escaped Nazis are in South America. At least I was surprised.
c) the hotel owner also revealed how, when he lived in Denmark, he used to go to the then-Communist Eastern Europe with his Danish friends, and they used to sleep with women for as little as $1. Or they'd bring a ham, like parma ham, and sleep with women for ham.
d) he then went to the door and started arguing for a long time with a young woman with a baby, saying he refused to give her any money and that she should go. This went on for some time. Rafa and I were captivated by the bizarreness of the dialogue, since the hotel owner was a man with a gentle voice and manner, and being terse with anyone seemed beyond him. Suddenly, after refusing for half an hour, through a little hole in the door, to give her any money, he went to his room and came back holding a note of 50 Bolivianos (roughly 5 pounds) and gave it to her. They carried on speaking as if nothing had happened and were long, loved friends.
Getting out of Bolivia was a tough one. Our Sunday flight was cancelled, so we had to get a Thursday flight instead, with LAB, the Bolivian airline which is going bankrupt. The company is in such a state that they have cardboard piggybanks all around travel agents' offices in town, pleading for 1 Boliviano (10p) to save the company and staff. And our beloved Dial-A-Flight had booked us onto a flight with this sorry company. I called D-A-F (with whom you should NEVER book tickets), asking if they'd known that LAB was going bankrupt when they debited my account, and they pleaded ignorance. I foamed, shouted, banged the phonebox and almost swore at the D-A-F representative. The Bolivians looked at me with a sort of bemusement, a gringa loca, shouting at someone far away.
So, the flight out of Bolivia was on Thursday, and it was Wednesday, so we decided we'd have to say goodbye to the 6 friends we'd made in Santa Cruz. One of them was a woman, part of a couple, who arrived with a cleavage wider than the Grand Canyon, in a long-tried attempt to get Rafa to gaze at the two cannons in her Canyon. She was a friendly girl at first, speaking to me slowly in Spanish, pretending to be interested in whatever I was talking about, but soonafter she turned her interests to R, much to the dismay of her husband, who grew more and more quiet as time went by. Her husband, a photographer, used his camera as a self-defense method, carrying it everywhere and taking more pictures the more nervous he got. In the end he was just snapping the walls. The wife, no longer a friendly female companion for me, started laughing at any mistake I made in Spanish, failing to realise that mistakes are what my Spanish is made of and that is something I am most proud of it. We also met our friend Christopher Walken, who, as some of you might recall, we'd met on most of our journey and befriended.
A friend of the Bolivian couple sat down with us and asked where we were from. We, obedient as schoolkids, went on to announce our origins. When it came to me I said 'Yugoslavia' (Bosnia's pretty much anonymous in those parts). I said 'Yugoslavia' and he heard: 'Yo no se', which means 'I don't know' in Spanish. He looked at me and said: 'You don't know where you are from?' Roars of laughter from everyone (especially the Bolivian girl who, in my now paranoid ears, was doing a Dr Evil roar). 'No, I said, I am from Yu-go-sla-via.' 'Aaaah, Yugohlavia,' said the guy. 'Yeh, Yugohlavia, thah raht.' I thought.
So, with this cocktail of odd friends we spent the last evening in the country, eating llama steaks as should befit a last supper in Bolivia.
Returning to our hotel, the owner informed us that the flight in the morning, the only flight out of Bolivia, was cancelled. LAB had phoned and said that out of their two airplanes, one was in Mexico and the other being repaired. We held our heads and shook them, until a light bulb fizzed inside my head and I decided we should go to the airport and refuse to leave until they put us on a plane to Brazil. Which is what we did. We queued, bright and early, eating a rubbery 'Subway' sandwich (their motto is 'Eat Fresh' - eat fresh, my arse) and sipping tea and coffee into our cardboard throats. The LAB ladies behind the LAB desk looked LABsick. Puppy-dog eyes, a lot of blinking, asking for disculpas. It turned out to be much easier than we'd thought and sooner than you could say feijoada, we were in Brazil. And, thanks to our lovely friend Marcelo, we were staying with a lovely girl by the name of Ana Paula, who let us use her flat and watch Seinfeld as much as we wanted (watching Seinfeld being the ultimate relaxation for me).
Aaah, Brazil! What a change! Young people, most of whom are stunningly, drop-yer-pants beautiful (I must confirm the stereotype) were hanging out in front of walls with trendy graffiti, eating delicious food, drinking cool beer. And not a backpacker in sight. It might have been heaven. So, we ate at street markets, danced a bit of salsa and samba, saw an alternachivoo (alternative) band called something like 'The Sonnet of an Enchanted Fire' (in Portuguese) rocking the birds out of their little nests in the city park, bought some mad sunglasses, looked dodgy in expensive shops that we didn't have the money for, walked around the poverty stricken downtown Sao Paulo where men and dogs lived the same lifestyles, and befriended some damn nice Brazilian people. Rafa was even given a football shirt by a friend of a friend, and we had a Polaroid picture taken with our instant-Brazilian friends. The old guy who sold Polaroids for 10 Reais (1 pound) took the picture, and since there were around 8 of us, he started counting heads on the picture, to make sure we were all there.
And then we flew and flew and flew, screaming children surrounding our seats, one of whom used my leg liberally as his toy-car's motorway. Touching down in London was so lovely and so strange that we had to sit and have a coffee to observe the chaos of the airport. People everywhere carrying everything in transparent plastic bags, thanks to the new post-panic regulations at Heathrow. Laptops in bags, bags in bags, eyeglasses in bags, books in bags, eyes in bags. You could suddenly tell a lot about a person from their hand luggage. How much tissue did they take? Did they use wet-wipes? Was there a toothbrush or chewing gum? A 'Hello' magazine or a Dan Brown book? Ear plugs or iPod? Hotpants?
We arrived at the flat and I couldn't unlock the door. I forgot which way to turn the key. It was like a 20 second paralysis of the brain. What was this door? I had to check the number several times, to make sure I wasn't in fact sticking my keys into my neighbour's door downstairs. And then, voila, the flat. The door was heavy with 5 weeks of post heaped behind it. The dust welcomed us in, making grey flower shapes to show its delight. My fern plant wasn't entirely dead. The potatoes were alive. Happiness. It's nice to be home.
P.S. Will try to attach some pictures now.
posted by Vesna at 12:18 PM
1 Comments:
fanks love
i can bolivit!
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