Bolivia is cold. Maike and I alternate being sick - Dandy Fever, Juggler´s Despair, Inflated Eyeball, Cecil Fielder Belly - we have it all and this naturally diminishes my enjoyment of this country substantially.
La Paz is a fibber´s delight - it is uphill in every direction. Here is the
picture that I wanted to take but could not muster the initiative due the incredible uphill climb required.
We leave via the World´s Most Dangerous Road to
Coroico, a pleasant place to count your blessings on arrival. The road seems to claim our onward bus to Rurrenabaque as it never arrives. We re-schedule.
From Rurrenabaque, we arrange a three-day tour of the nearby Pampas. The accommodations are basic and they make you
catch your own dinner but the
scenery is fantastic and the wildlife plentiful. Our camp is dominated by a group of London sixth formers, all girls. Their incessant choruses of
"Katie Madding! Shut your mouth!" is a bit intrusive at first but over time it irritates less as I realize that it needs to be said. She does talk a lot. And such rubbish!
The itinerary offers the opportunity to swim with pink dolphins but omits the relevant detail that the dolphins are swimming with
alligators.
Turtles. Birds. Frogs. Snakes too - our guide allows for three hours to locate an anaconda but he fails to allow for our limited attention span.
Capybaras appear to disprove Darwinism. Hmmm…perhaps there is something to this intelligent design idea after all.
"Katie Madding! Shut your mouth!"The capybaras defense mechanism is as follows:
* Watch carefully as danger approaches.
* Panic and yelp.
* Run three feet.
* Relax.
* Repeat.
We pop back to La Paz to juggle our flights with LAN. The LAN office in La Paz possesses no authority and is not allowed to telephone the head office on Santiago for fear of the long distance charges. The service is naturally slow.
In general, it has been my experience that offices consistently offer poor service as an opener perhaps to see if you will accept it. Those changes will be billed and you won´t fly on that date and the only available meal is leftovers. If you respond with a calm but disdainful rejection of this reality however, you can dictate your terms (there is no charge and I will fly that date and I will have the same meal as the captain plus three glasses of wine) with a remarkable degree of success. It works with LAN...eventually.
We take the bus to Sucre. One of the attractions here is the well-preserved
dinosaur tracks recently discovered on the grounds of a cement factory. UNESCO is considering whether to grant World Heritiage status to the site. They had better hurry up, here comes the
dynamite truck!
"Kate Madding! Shut your mouth!"The mines that made Potosi the richest city in the world are still active hundreds of years later. You can tour the mines and see the appalling conditions that the workers endure. Maike goes but my lumberlung flares up and I think the better of it.
