Llama for Lunch Page 13
Bolivia, landlocked and isolated, is not only the highest but the second-poorest South American country. It has a predominantly indigenous population of 6.6 million, seventy per cent of whom live on the bleak alti-plateau west and north of La Paz. There are also a mixed bag of other nationalities – Europeans descended from Canadian Mennonites, escaped Nazi war criminals, missionaries and one per cent of the population is of African descent. Half the size of Western Australia, Bolivia shares borders with Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile and boasts some of the world’s wildest frontiers, as well as the highest concentration of cosmic rays on earth. Perhaps that is what gives it its feeling of otherworldliness.
Since Simon Bolivar gained independence for Bolivia in 1824 there have been 189 governments – there is an abnormally high mortality rate among politicians. President Murillo was publicly lynched from a lamp post in the square named after him.
Agriculturally Bolivia is a subsistence nation that exports small amounts of coffee and timber and is the world’s largest legal exporter of coca, earning US 1.5 billion dollars from its sale. But only half of this remains in the country. One-third of the Bolivian work force depend on coca for employment. There are 54,000 hectares under cultivation in the Chapare region alone, and they yield 100,000 kilos of coca per annum, all of which is exported. Although cocaine is illegal Bolivians chew coca leaves daily and make tea from them. Mama Coca is the daughter of the earth goddess and the earth cult revolves around the coca leaf, the use of which was a privilege originally reserved for Inca priests and the royal family but which eventually spread from Bolivia to Columbia. Cocaine is grown as coca leaf, then dried, soaked in kerosene, mashed into a pulp and treated with hydrochloric and sulphuric acid, then with ether, to produce white crystals.
From high above La Paz we began to descend through the poor and littered upper suburbs of tin or straw-covered adobe houses that flank the approach. The muddy, uncared-for roads were lined with downmarket auto repair shops and junkyards and Indian women washed laundry in the sewage-laden river. Then the earth dropped away and it all disappeared as La Paz lay four hundred metres beneath us, climbing the walls of the canyon that is almost five kilometres from rim to rim and gives the city in its arms protection from the fierce winds and weather.
Driving down the one major thoroughfare, whch follows the path of least resistance through the canyon and along the course of the Rio Choqueyapu, we reached the city centre. From the downtown skyscrapers of the main square everything zoomed steeply uphill to the rim, behind which the whitetopped, seven-thousand-metre peak of Illimani loomed.
Happily I parted company with the bus. The sight of the remains of several of its ilk, as well as the forests of little crosses beside the road commemorating other vehicles that had gone flying over the edge, had not endeared me to it. Putting my watch forward an hour made the time now five and already it was decidedly frigid. Winters in La Paz are very cold and dry and the temperature falls below freezing as soon as the sun sets.
I was taken for the proverbial ride by a taxi driver. I knew he was a villain when he let a kerb-side window washer clean his stationwagon’s rear window and then refused to pay. And the poor fellow didn’t even complain. Apart from this taxi driver, I liked all the Bolivian people with whom I had dealings and found them courteous and kind.
The hotel I finally found was in San Pedro, or Saint Peter’s square, opposite the prison. While negotiating the price of the room the manager, a kind and gentle soul, joked that I could get free accommodation over there. Hooray! I now had enough Spanish to understand a joke. The hotel, a hulking twostorey stone edifice, was okay but very cold. My room didn’t have a window, just a skylight recessed a million kilometres away in the lofty ceiling. Staring up at the grotty piece of plastic sheeting that covered the skylight and the bare light bulb that dangled beside it, I longed for my sunny room in Puno.
Begging another blanket, I doubled it over on my bed, but the air was still too cold to allow my hands out to hold a book. My room had a TV, which to my surprise featured the news from the BBC in English, the main item being a plane disaster in Paris. Nice comforting stuff to watch when you’re travelling. Once again I very nearly electrocuted myself using the diabolical electric shower in the bleak Arctic bathroom with its perpetually wet floor. I would have gladly swapped the TV for a bath-mat or a heater. The electric socket by the bed light didn’t work but instead of fixing it someone had roughly banged another into the wall alongside it. The hotel had wooden floors throughout and what sounded like herds of elephants passed along the corridor beside my door.
Abandoning my freezing room for the marginally colder streets, I walked downtown and found much activity and a busy night market. Hundreds of lantern-lit stalls lined the main street, and in the clear air lights glittered all over the slopes where the city crawled up the sides of the canyon. The main avenue, known as El Prado, was a promenade of trees, flowers, monuments and old homes with iron latticework and balustrades. Many small streets, mostly cobbled or unpaved, branched off the main drag. They were lined with tiny shops that sold leather, weavings, alpaca items, silver and antiques, while street vendors offered, among a variety of goods, irons heated by charcoal, stone carvings, and medicinal cures of the ancient Incan medicine men. A couple of beggars sat on the steps of the large San Francisco church in the main square and a man with no hands played a mouth organ. There is no welfare system in Bolivia.
With all the clothes I was wearing the cold was bearable, but I pitied the poor and homeless. Most women wore national dress – you couldn’t fail to be warm in all those skirts and petticoats – but many were heavily laden, their backs bent almost double with bundles and babies. I resisted the offerings of unbottled drinks, cream cakes and other goodies, possibly featuring instant typhoid, and, meeting two English girls who had shared the horrors of the bus ride from Copacabana with me, went with them to a chifa, a Chinese restaurant and had a decent meal of fried rice, chop suey and local beer. The beer was good around here but it was impossible to find it cold. Fridges were sometimes used merely as storage and were either not turned on, or turned on so low that their contents were barely cool.
The chiming of the San Pedro church clock in the square woke me in the morning. The square had benches, photographers with oldfashioned boxed cameras draped with black cloths on stands, the ubiquitous pigeons and a few scrappy bushes. I couldn’t find anywhere that served breakfast so I bought a couple of plain bread rolls from a street vendor and walked along munching. The bread was good enough to eat and cost only a quarter of a bol per roll – there are three bolivianos to an Australian dollar. It was a sharp climb up to my hotel from the main plaza but in the narrow streets that rose from it there was much less of the horrendous traffic that congested the centre and gassed you with exhaust fumes.
All that day until late afternoon I walked around La Paz with only half an hour off for lunch. It was a delight to wander aimlessly up and down the extremely steep but fascinating streets. I found La Paz was well endowed with elaborate churches. Ninety-five per cent of Bolivians profess to be Roman Catholic, but it is a hybrid Christianity incorporating the ancient folk religion, especially in rural areas. Ekeko, the little dwarf household god responsible for matchmaking, finding homes and success in business, still has a big following. Perpetually lost, I found the hechiceria, the witches’ market, by mistake. Here women sat on the footpath selling potions and spells to kill, cure or get you a lover, as well as talismans to ward off evils arising from the aforementioned spells. Then there were incenses and fragrant woods to burn for all of the above reasons or just because you liked them – and dried llama foetuses that were so totally gruesome I couldn’t imagine owning one no matter what it might do. Items used in white magic and animism, including grease, nuts, wool and concoctions, were on offer. Although I fancied some of the spells, I desisted, imagining the outrage of an Australian customs officer confronted with them.
Further on was the hurly-burly of t
he black market which sold everything – contraband, medicines, sulpha drugs, codeine containing analgesics, pots, pans, leatherware and food galore. Stall after stall, street after street, it continued on both sides of the road for kilometres. In my meanderings I came upon the hotel that a British boy on the bus had told me about and went in to inspect it. I was shown a big, sunny room that cost twenty bolivianos and booked it for the following day. Taking a short cut that led in the general direction of my present hotel, by some miracle I rounded a corner and was right at the door. Maybe one of the talismans rubbed off on me.
In my freezing room I scrunched down under the blankets to write, wearing my alpaca fur hat, three jumpers, long-johns, knitted socks, slacks, pantyhose, singlet, long-sleeved spencer, shirt and poncho. It was a major operation to get dressed and undressed. I went out to dine towards evening still wearing the big fluffy hat because it was so warm I couldn’t bear to take it off.
La Paz at dusk as the sun settled on the surrounding valley was beautiful. A reddish glow enveloped Illimani and the surrounding high peaks of the Andes against the deep blue sky. In the street all the women goggled at my hat. I thought, Well, they should talk, what about their own stupid hats? I am sorry if this sounds uncharitable. I like hats, but those bowlers they wear look ridiculous and I wouldn’t be caught dead in one. I read that the bowler hats and voluminous skirts worn by Indian women were imposed on them by the Spanish king in the eighteenth century and that the centre parting of their hair was the result of a decree by the viceroy of Toledo. Both these men obviously hated women.
I ate in the Cafe La Paz, a quaint old dive that is a hang-out for politicians and businessmen and was, until he was expelled in 1983, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie’s favourite spot. After dark the entire canyon, up to where it met the alti-plateau, was ablaze with lights. And above the rim, the stars were brilliant in the clear night sky while the moon hovered over Illimani’s eternal snows.
At nine o’clock the next morning I presented myself at the gates of the prison to try for the tour of the premises that the hotel manager had told me was possible. The prison building was very old and had one massive windowless stone wall about twelve metres high right on the street. The wall on the other side was the same height but high up in it were narrow slits of windows. In the middle of the front wall there was a large gateway with iron-reinforced, wooden doors. The outside of the prison was a grim, forbidding place that chilled me to look at but inside, what a contrast! Its exterior totally belied what lay beyond the wall.
I stood on one side of the great gate in the brilliant morning sun and tried to communicate to one of the guards with large guns who were stationed there that I wanted to go in. A couple of other foreigners who had also heard of this attraction joined me, and a large mob of locals who had come to visit relatives waited in a line on the other side.
Finally we tourists were allowed into the arched stone porch, where several more guards were posted at a desk. My handbag was checked for cakes containing files and weapons of destruction – well, it is big enough for a couple. At the back of the porch was an open-grilled but barred and padlocked gate about two-and-a-half metres wide and through it I could see a sunny courtyard with trees and flowerbeds. A terrific clamour arose from the mobs of prisoners – this is an all-male prison – who were pressed against this gate. Pushing their arms through the grille they called out to me: ‘Senora, senora!’ This was a bit scary but I think they only wanted to sign on as my guide.
I was led away from the other tourists and shunted into a dark stone alleyway on one side where a woman guard sat at a desk. She took my passport and entered my particulars in an exercise book. Then she body-searched me and asked whom I wanted to see, ‘amigo o marido’, husband or friend? So much for being pleased that I looked like a local.
I realised now that I had ended up in the wrong place, having been separated from the herd who had been sent elsewhere. I was no longer an interested spectator, I belonged! Help. Using all the Spanish at my command, I got out again as fast as I could. Now I had to walk through a corridor where crowds of prisoners pressed against a metal wall that had an iron grille from waist-height up. Women visitors who could not pay the price to go inside the grounds were allowed to stand here and talk to them. Nice – I looked like one of them. Not only the gun moll of some degenerate felon but a poor, unsuccessful one at that.
Back at the gate I started again. I gave my passport to the guard to guarantee my return – Lord, would you want to stay in there? – and, with a couple of Dutch men, was handed to a guide who greeted us cordially, shook hands and said his name was William. He warned us not to take any valuables with us. A bit late now, I thought. What should I do with any I did have – give them to another prisoner, hopefully merely a murderer and not a thief, to hold for safekeeping? ‘Stay close to me,’ William the Villain said, and three of his fellow miscreants fell in behind as the rearguard. I guess it would be terribly bad for business if one of us was murdered.
The prison was amazing. The accommodation consisted of ancient, tiny, stone rabbit-warrens that you had to buy for the duration of your stay. They cost from four hundred to twenty-five hundred dollars. Extra comforts could also be bought. You could sublet or sell your cell and I saw ‘for sale’ signs posted on walls. There were seven sections of cells. The best were ‘safe’. Children could live with you and many tiny tots were in evidence. The bigger children went to school and rang the bell to get back in. Bizarre. Wives with money, though apparently not ones who looked like me, could visit, but only during the day. Once inside the gates, there were no guards. Not game I suppose.
Before we started our tour we first had to be presented to, and inspected by a man who was introduced to us as ‘The Head Man’ and his deputy. They were fascinated by Australian crocodiles and asked how big they grew and so on. I impressed them no end by saying I had seen crocs in the wild. It was all very pleasant and convivial. The Head Man’s room had a TV set and a phone. He said that he regretted not having the internet.
We visited the shop, various food stalls and a large old church decorated with murals. The priest came every day at ten to say mass. Pet dogs and cats wandered about and washing that included tiny clothes was hanging over balconies. Incongruously, a large pine tree that reached right up to the roof grew alongside one exterior wall. It looked as though it would be easy to shin up it and jump over. I was told that many prisoners carried on trades, making jewellery, doing carpentry and running businesses.
The kitchen looked awful and smelled worse. Joking, I asked if I could stay for lunch but was told the food was ‘little and terrible’. It was a case of buy your own or starve. There were eighteen hundred men in this prison. Some were washing clothes outside in stone troughs, while many just sat in the sun. All smiled and said ‘Hola’. I felt that we were their day’s entertainment.
Back at the gate I shook William’s hand, paid him the ten-dollar price of the tour and was let out. I heard later that he was a murderer.
My new hotel was the Dynastie. My octagonal third-floor room sat on a corner of the building and featured four large windows that looked down into the market on the street below. All day I heard the cries of pedlars but they quietened down at night. From early morning the windows allowed blissful sun into the room which kept it warm. The windows on one side framed a view of the belfry and cross of an old church that rose above the market. The church had a roof of ancient tiles, many of which were broken or haphazardly crooked with long grass growing out of them.
The Dynastie served breakfast on the sixth floor. I needed oxygen by the time I got there after starting my ascent at reception. The view of the mountain peaks that seemed close enough to touch made up for this, although it didn’t quite make up for ordering eggs and getting cake – just when I thought my Spanish was coming along nicely.
From La Paz I planned to travel up north, firstly to Coroico, then to Rurrenabaque in the Bolivian lowlands. I read that the lowlands were hot, flat and
sparsely populated. I couldn’t wait, especially for the first two.
The part of Amazonia that covers most of Bolivia’s north is less spoiled than that of Brazil and Peru. Amazonia, the basin of the River Amazon and its tributaries, covers a huge area encompassing tracts of Peru, northern Bolivia, Colombia and Brazil. There is only one road to it. It connects the alti-plateau, the high Andean plateau where I now was, to the yungas – the valleys beneath – and the level Amazon rainforest. It passes through Coroico, a village noted for its tranquillity and spectacular position. Perched at fifteen hundred metres on the shoulder of a mountain, Coroico has outstanding views of forested valleys, plantations, cloud-wreathed mountains and the peaks of the Cordillera Real, Bolivia’s most prominent range of mountains and one of the Andes’ highest and most impressive.
The road through the Andes was the major drawback. Considered the most dangerous road in the Americas, it takes two hours to drop three thousand metres, winds all the way to Coroico and features appalling rock overhangs, horrifying chasms and waterfalls eroding the narrow track that is flanked by near-vertical, thousand-metre precipices. An average of one vehicle per week goes over the edge. I thought I had seen it all on the way here and could not imagine any worse. I was already scared stiff, but was assured by my guide book that what I had traversed so far was a doddle compared to what lay ahead.
Enquiries I made at various tourist agents about onward travel towards the north elicited the information that minibuses were okay, but big buses and trucks were not safe. They were top heavy and ‘fell over the side a lot’; jeeps did the same because they went too fast. No one denied that lots of both varieties did fall over. That didn’t leave much to choose from. From my bus rides so far I had come to the conclusion that no vehicle driven by a local was safe.