Buenos dias,
When we left you last time we were hoping to avoid the Russian mafia after tormenting some of their arrogant children by flashlight. Our escape route was to La Paz in Bolivia via a long and interesting travel day involving 2 buses, 3 flights, and a frightening cab ride.
The day did not start well. On flight number 1 I was heavily abused by a sweet faced Argentine air hostess. I was tapping away on my blackberry (writing some of these fascinating stories) when she appeared beside me and launched into a fairly determined diatribe in Spanish. I thought she was just rather excitedly asking if she could take the leftovers of a flaccid muffin doubling as their in-flight meal, so i smiled, said ‘si’, and went to pass it to her. You could see her mind ticking over; is he stupid, doesn’t speak Spanish or both (lock in option C). So she simplified it firmly in English for me; ‘Phone. Off. Now’. Funny; there were a lot more words in her Spanish version but maybe she hasn’t got around to converting the fruitier aspects of the Spanish language to English just yet.
I tried to respond in my best Spanish ‘phone-os in flight-os mode-os’. She just looked at me and said threateningly ‘not on this company!!’. What made it more perplexing is that the next row were belting away on iPads, and the ones in front listening to iPods. But I knew my Spanish didn’t extend to discussing the similarities in operation and radio frequency between the different pieces of electronic equipment so just sheepishly turned the phone off and hoped that the angry Argentine Princess would move on and put an end to my public embarrassment.
Then the transit through Buenos Aires airport. We arrive at a security screening checkpoint staffed entirely by young women in quasi-military uniform. I’m told to take coins out of my pocket but am told there is no tray so just put them on the conveyor belt. Sure enough as I wait to pass through the screen the tickle of my coins falling through the belt onto the floor echoes in time to Krys setting off the alarm. The lady very helpfully pointed to the floor and said ‘your coins’ and while I am down on all fours scraping up Pesos, beside me Krys was getting a frisking so enthusiastic from an attractive security lady that it would make a lap dancer blush. Krys was so lost for words when the security lady demanded to know where she was traveling to I’m surprised she didn’t just blurt out ‘your place’.
Then onto the local Bolivian airline for the two flights to La Paz which was like a step back in time. The first plane had dings and scrapes down the side, and engines that looked like they were held in place by pot rivets. I was waiting for the Captain to step out and hand spin the propellers to get them going. But the best was the hostesses; resplendent in tight white tops and purple hot pants; despite a lack of attentiveness in their service I don’t think there were many complaints. As for flying the plane, the Captain did it with the cockpit doors wide open as if looking to get a breeze going. Then again, unless some crazy person had a vendetta against cereal crops, llamas or half built farm houses there aren’t many targets for any would be hijackers to go after.
The last flight was heavily delayed. So imagine our surprise when we finally get the call for the flight, walk across the tarmac and are greeted by a plane with a name bearing no relation to the company we booked with, and looked so old that I imagine it would have been used to ferry Stalin between Moscow and the Ukraine. It felt like our original plane had broken down, and they’d gone to the back paddock, wiped down a leftover from the aircraft museum with a wet-wipe and hoped no-one would notice. It even came complete with in seat ashtrays.
But it did manage to get into the sky and down again (always a positive for a plane) but due to flight delays we landed in La Paz and it was 11pm. So we walked out the front, looked for what we thought were ‘official’ taxis, and jumped in. But ‘official’ in Bolivia means an old craggly man with a random smattering of teeth and an unsettling cackle driving a clapped out old Toyota with no meter. I ask to stop just up the road to confirm a price and that he knows where we are going. He says a number that seems reasonable, repeats our address, gives off an unsettling cackle and so off we set.
The top of La Paz late at night is a dodgy place. And instead of main roads the driver takes us up dark, narrow cobbled streets fringed with rubbish and groups of young men milling around ominously. Dogs are everywhere, running out and trying to bite the car as it dribbles past. It feels like we are in the middle of nowhere; just buried deep in a maze of darkness and half built houses with only our cackling friend as a way out.
After 30mins of twisting and turning, darkness, rubbish and dogs we started to panic, and the stories about tourists being taken to the back blocks of La Paz and held hostage appeared to be on the verge of adding another chapter. I’m trying to pretend to Krys that this feels normal, at the same time trying to call the hotel to ask them to speak to the driver to tell him the exact address and also to beg him to let us keep our kidneys. I get through but they hang up and my phone then hits a fabled Telstra ‘black spot’.
Krys is frantically putting phrases into ‘Google Translater’ such as ‘can we please take the main road’. Well that’s what she said she did anyway; wouldn’t be surprised if she was translating ‘take my boyfriend and bury him good. I’ll pay you 100 Bolivianos to cover the required cleaning products’. I repeat the address over and over to our friend only for him to repeat it back then cackle, as if the address is more a wish than any chance of reality.
We take a few more turns and then………. we pop out at a nice square out the front of our hotel. Maybe our cackling friend found the panic of two bewildered tourists entertaining. But we have never been so convinced that we were about to lose some internal organs to the Bolivian black market.
But we made it to La Paz and it has been interesting. Between missing washing, bike accidents and Krys’ popularity with the locals it has been enjoyable. But more on that later.
Adios
Trent, Krystal and Joseph Stalin.
smallthoughts 