Hello all from La Paz, Bolivia! This is quite possibly my favorite city that we have stopped in on this trip. But more on that later...
Tom last wrote in Ollyantombo (yeah I don´t know how to spell it) in Peru. We were stuck in that town for a couple days, having fallen victim to the tourist trap that is Machu Picchu. Tour buses from all over the region converge on the city and dump load upon load of foreign tourists upon the Peruvian version of Disneyland. Led by local tour guides who wave flags to keep their herds separate, these camera-toting and suncap-clad visitors sack the town in search of the perfect wall hanging or painting to show that they had in fact been to Peru. This city is a bottleneck; the only way to get to Machu Picchu is to take the one train that runs out of the city. Tom and I felt that it would be shame to be in Peru and not see MP, so we bought our train tickets and settled in for the fiscal raping. The train ride to MP takes about an hour and half. It costs over $50 a man. By comparison, you can take a bus 1000 miles from Santiago, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina for less money. Once off the train, you must buy a bus ticket for the 20 minute ride to the site: $12. The coup de grace is the admission itself: $40 for us lucky foreigners. Although MP is undeniably an interesting place, it probably says something that the best part of the day was watching a Japanese woman get thrown from a llama as she tried to mount it for a photo.
After MP, we cruised back through Cuzco for a quick lunch with some priests at a monastery / youth mission. From there we headed to the Bolivian border. The route ran along the southern shores of Lake Titicaca. I had first heard of Lake Titicaca in 4th grade music class amidst the chuckles of my fellow male classmates. They can´t be serious with a name like that? But they are, and the highest navigable lake in the world is a site to see. The blueness of the waters makes the oceans take a step back. Its shoreline is filled with indigenous people digging irrigation trenches for crops or building brown adobe houses. At times you can barely see the mountains on the far side of the lake that are the welcoming wave from Bolivia. Furthermore, the inspiration for the Barry Manilow song "Copacabana" apparently is located somewhere around these parts, although thus far it has eluded us.
As we had hoped, the border crossing was extremely relaxed. Gone were the throngs of young men vying for a chance to do our paperwork. The border officials didn´t want our money, but only to fill out some forms and send us on our way. I chatted with the border police and shared a bag of peanuts with them while Tom went through the border formalities. Once in Bolivia, we found ourselves back in the land of the high sierra. The road to La Paz is overlooked to the north by the spine of the Cordillera Real, a mountain range that boasts at least ten white-capped peaks over 6000 meters. Black and white cows graze the amber grass, and the houses are painted with signs calling for ´Morales - Presidente´ in support of the recently elected Evo Morales, the first indigenous leader in South America.
Between its setting at 14,000 feet, the constant trudging up mountain city streets, and the diesel clogged byways, La Paz literally takes your breath away. This sprawling city is a mass of energy, where there is constantly a shop to look in, a minibus to dodge, or cheap restaurant to take advantage of. Prices have continually dropped the farther we get from Cuzco. Our first night in the city, Tom and I had a dinner with three entrees and a couple cokes for $2. Two-thirds of a liter of beer costs a buck (although the beer, like in the rest of Latin America, generally sucks). And for those of you with money to burn, you can acquire a nicely mummified cow fetus at the witch´s market for about $10. After almost sliding backwards down a mountain road into traffic on our KLRs, Tom and I found a nice hotel with hot water for about $15 a night. The staff has been very friendly, although they were taken aback by the stench that has resurfaced in my socks in recent days. After two nights airing out in the hallway, my socks mysteriously disappeared on the third day. Tom went in search of them, the owner of the establishment knew quite well of my stinky socks. A housekeeper eventually produced the beasts from beneath a kitchen sink, wrapped in a plastic bag to quarantine the disease. ¨Tell your friend his socks are quite rich,¨she said as she tossed the bag to Tom. Sorry. Its mold. What can I do?
La Paz has no shortage of churches and museums to go and see. However, Tom and I had heard that it was possible to tour the prison of San Pedro, so that is what we first set off to do. The prison is downtown and within walking distance of our hotel. We strolled over and covertly asked a couple guards if it was possible to get in to see the place. They said they doubted it, but directed us to go see the head of the prison, Colonel Guzman. We found the steel door that contained Guzman, and after 15 minutes and several requests he finally produced himself. Dressed in his prison uniform, Guzman politely told us that this was a secure facility and that the public was not allowed. He asked if we had a friend inside. I wondered if my elementary school friend Carl was still locked away in that Bolivan prison, but I couldn´t remember, so we told Guzman that we just wanted to see the building. He was a really nice guy, so he told us that if we wanted to get in we would have to get a memorandum of ingress from the national director of prisons. He probably thought that this would dissuade us from trying anything further. So we asked directions...
The national director was one Dr. Garcia Llamas. At the government building that held his office we traded our passports for red access badges, and asked to see Dr. Lorenzo Llamas. We knew the name was incorrect, but we couldn´t stop giggling when we asked to see Lorenzo Llamas, the beautiful pony-tailed star of the hit 80´s action series Renegade. After a few false starts, we were finally told by Llamas´ secretary that the Doctor was sleeping (either sleeping or busy - she talked really fast so I´m not sure), but she directed us to a different official who could help. At this point we decided that a back story would be helpful. Instead of being just some random motorcycle adventurer, I became law professor who studies penal systems throughout the world. Tom became a medical sociologist (whatever that is), but later switched to a law professor who volunteers at medical clinics when that became easier to explain. We were told by this official that we could not get into San Pedro; that it was too secure. We then asked if there were other prisons we could get into, because Bolivian prisons were the linchpin to my scholarly research. She listed some other facilities and told us to write a letter to the top dog explaining what we were studying. We asked what prison this would get us into. ¨San Pedro,¨ she replied. Confused? Yes. But we didn´t ask questions.
Using our elementary Spanish we scratched out a request to the national prison director, and were rewarded with a letter from him the next day granting us access. We arrived at San Pedro at the designated time, gave the guards the letter, were searched, and were let in through the gate. Now this was not your ordinary ¨Hey come check out my cell¨ kind of prison. There are no cells. There are just 1500 inmates milling around in a kind of complex reminiscent of a low-budget version of Melrose Place. All the guards stay on the outside during the day. As the gate slammed behind us, we were swarmed by a bunch of residents. Not really sure what to do, we asked if there was anyone who spoke English. One guy ran off. Another in black warm up pants and gelled hair told me to be careful in here; accidents happen. He then produced a homemade knife, expertly flipped it in the air, and casually slid it back into his pocket. Our requests for an English speaker were rewarded when a red-headed Spaniard introduced himself. He knew about enough English to explain to us that he was in prison for another 20 years for narco-trafficking, told us it sucked being the only white guy, and asked me for some cash. Finally we found a real English speaker who had been in the US for eight years. He took us on a tour of the place, all the while being followed by a small posse of thugs. He explained that those guys were going to accost him in his room after we left and demand the money they assumed we were paying him.
Inmates at the prison have to pay rent. Depending on how much they can afford, they can either get a private room with a private bath (rare) or a closet-sized room to be shared with two other guys. If they couldn´t afford rent from outside sources, then they worked twelve hours a day for the other prisoners doing laundry or making juice. Most prisoners get help from outside; the state only contributed 50 cents per prisoner per day for expenses, plus the costs of electricity and water. Everything else that happens in the prison comes from outside resources, or from working the internal economic system. For example, the biggest drug lord in Bolivia recently spent two years in San Pedro. Since he had boat loads of cash, he built himself a third level onto the prison structure just for himself and lived the good life until he was transferred. Money is everything, and if you have none you´re screwed. The guy who who showed us around was very helpful. We paid him with $15, a Twix bar, and a pack of cigarettes. He paid off the gang of thugs with half the money, and escorted us to the exit. It was a very strange experience.
Sadly, our little adventure will be parting ways with La Paz tomorrow. It looks like Tom will be back. Tom´s plan for after I leave is to volunteer at a hospital down here for the next eight months until he returns to the States next summer to pursue a medical degree. While in La Paz he visited several hospitals and seems to have found some positions that may work out. Just like gaining access to the prison, it took a little stretching of the truth ("I think I may have accidently told them I was a first-year medical student. Ahh, what do you learn in the first year of med school anyway?"), but it looks like he´ll return here in a few months, either to assist in surgeries or to scrub toilets. He´s not quite sure which yet.
For those of you concerned about the bikes, they are running pretty well. I get my second flat tire a couple weeks ago courtesy of a three-inch nail. Tom´s bike has been slowly losing oil recently, although I think we finally found the source of the leak and (hopefully) clogged it up with a liberal application of gasket sealant (and in the process virtually destroying the white garbage can from our hoptel room: grease and white plastic do not make good bedfellows). The KLRs have handled the thin air of high altitude quite well, although sometimes when ascending a steep mountain they seem to have the pòwer of a moped. But they´ve made it 8,000 miles, and I think making it to Tierra del Fuego is well within their grasp. Tomorrow we will be heading into the Amazon basin rain forest to the city of Rurrenabaque for a few days, and then southeast to the colonial mining (and virtual Indian slavery center) at Potosi. We will be challenged with sub-par fuel, tires that are running our of tread, and a reappearance of malaria-toting mosquitoes. So long for now.
Nate
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