There are so many opportunities to meet amazing people when you travel the world via the backpacker route.Five star hotels and package tours tend to give a distorted view of each city that you visit.Everything is safe and easy to find,courtesy of your friendly consierge or overly eager tour gude.Most times the tour guides themselves know little more of the city they are showcasing than what is printed in any Lonely Planet guidebook.I know this from dealing with twenty odd years of tour guides in my work in the hotel game in Australia.This is especially so when the destination falls into the "Dangerous holiday destination" category.Bolivia,it would seem,fall into this category.
If everyone in the world heeded the warnings about travel in Bolivia then there just wouldn't be a tourist industry there at all.Thankfully there are enough free thinking,open minded and brave travellers who are putting the myth of death and destruction awaiting those that dare cross the border right where that myth belongs.In fantasy land!I would venture that I've seem more danger on the street in my home town of Cairns than I ever saw in La Paz,or anywhere in Bolivia for that matter.
Don't get me wrong,bad things do happen here and sadly a young European couple met their maker at the hands of some very scary locals just before I arrived in town.They didn't heed the warnings that are given to all backpackers in La Paz.Do not use any taxi but those radio cabs that are licensed by the city.You see,this city is just full of cabs and buses but only a few are actually licensed radio cabs.The rest,even though they look like cabs, aren't.Sure they will take you to your destination and yes they are very,very cheap but why bother when any cab fare is just chump change to we westerners.The rules for these cabs are different as well.When you get into one of these cabs it is operated more like a mini bus and they will continue to pick up other passengers until it is full.You have no say at all!
This brings me to the dangers involved in trying to save about two cents per mile.As these cabs pick up locals,they naturally have to take them to local suburbs most of which are not on the tourist path and all of which are not patrolled by large groups of heavily armed police.This is what happend to the unfortunate Euros.Their cab was flagged down by some local lads and they were now trapped inside a strange cab driving through a very strange area.Long story short,they were robbed and murdered.End of story!I never stopped shaking my head at the stupidity of the backpacker youth as they tried to save a few pennies by flagging down these cabs.Drunk backpackers are the favourite targets as the driver will just drive in the opposite direction and then demand way more money than was agreed upon to get then back home.Then,to add insult to injury,the change given will usually be counterfeit notes.In La Paz there is a huge trade in fake currency and believe it or not,more fake U.S. dollars are made there than anywhere apart from Eastern Europe.The fake Bolivianos are funny(yes I got stung too) because the quality of the notes is bad,the size is just a little different and the colours aren't perfect.If those little signs aren't enough to warm you then just look a little harder.It is actually in printed quite clearly on the notes that they "are not legal tender".Bloody brilliant!!Seems they can't get arrested for passing fake note if they print on them that they are fake.Not thier fault that the stupid gringos can't read Spanish.The main way of passing these dodgy notes is as change to drunken tourists(me)or as part of a stack of real bills making change at the markets around town.
One cool scam I heard of involved a licenced money changer.As I said,the fake U.S. dollar trade is huge here and the money changers are very careful at checking all the notes that we gringo's hand over.One enterprising money changer started taking random bills from tourists and declaring that they were fake.She would then tell the tourist in question that not only was exchanging forgeries a very serious crime but that she was duty bound by law to confiscate the money and turn it into the police.She had an accomplice dressed in military style uniform who would then start to question the,by now,shit-scared tourist.Every time the tourist would prefer to lose a hundred or so dollars than face the prospect of facing Bolivian justice.Very nice little business really,until they got caught.
I found out about about most of these scams thanks to a guy I met at one of the local gringo watering holes,"Oliver Travells",a nice English style pub located in the heart of downtown La Paz and only a short stagger home from my hostel.I had heard about this place and was keen to see just how authentic an English pub it could possibly be.One afternoon,after another day of wandering the streets I stumbled upon "Olivers"(not the only stumbling that would take place here)and climbed the stairs from it's laneway entrance to check it out.Once entering the smallish one room pub I felt as if I had gone back to my days in Asia where every major city has it's cheap and tacky version of mother England.As it was the afternoon the place wasn't that busy and the staff were all happily standing en-masse behind the bar making short work of a large plate of french fries.As all good bartenders know,if you want to find out about a city,ask another bartender so I found a seat at the bar and ordered myself a pint of "Saya",the local boutique beer brewed in the basement of my hostel(I love this town).Over lunch at the bar I soon fell into conversation with the staff and customers and after the usual backpacker question time(Where are you from?Where have you been?Where are you going?Do you have any hot chicks at your hostel?) I was accepted into the fold.
Most people I met on my trip thought that the cycle trip I was doing was nuts and the crew at Olivers' were no different.They did though,unike most people in my other life in Oz and Canada,take a great interest in it and asked question after question,fascinated in the experiences of my life on the road.Matt,the English bartender,soon tried to recruit me to play on the pub soccer squad against a team of locals and was very dissapointed at my refusal.I explained that the last time I played social soccer I blew my knee out and I wasn't keen to have another knee reconstruction,especially here in Bolivia.Poor guy was crushed as I guess he was thinking that a fit and sober addition to the team would have been a great asset.No doubt that the sqaud survived though as there was an endless pool of talent assembled at the pub each day watching Premier League soccer on the pubs' t.v screens.
Life in that pub was,at times, quite bizzare.Not only was it a pub,it also doubled as a second hand bookstore and booking agent for Gravity Assisted Tours,the mountain bike company that my new Kiwi mate owned.The bookstore side of the business was run out of thier own huge library of books set up in a room off the main pub area and could be used as a book swap as well.The thing is,these books must have been the most expensive books in Sth America.The prices that they charged was off the charts by Bolivian standards and I saw many a argument start between book buyers and the staff.It was during one of these confrontations that I had the misfortune to meet the ownner of the pub,Oliver himself.
Oliver is a tall,skinny, blonde 20-something English bloke who was,by some miracle,granted permission to set up this pub in La Paz.I would like to be nice in his description but the only way I can describe him is that he is perhaps the biggest English football hooligan that I have ever seen.He seemed to spend the first half of the day recovering from the night before and from the permanently glazed look in his eyes it came to no surprise to me when I was told that he liked imbibing in Bolivias' most famous export,cocain.His mood swings were something of legend and I witnessed first-hand many forms of the cruel mistreatment of his long-suffering staff.I could understand why the local staff put up with it but why on earth a backpacker would deal with that for only $5US a day I'll never know.
He tried it on me once when he overheard me refusing the sales pitch for the bike tour down the "Worlds' Most Dangerous Road" with Gravity Assisted Tours.As one of the few agents for that company in town they tried to sell to everyone that came in the door so he wasn't happy when I didn't seem interested in booking a trip.His mood was swinging toward the dark side when Matt saved the day by explaining to him about my bike trip and that the owner of both "Gravity Assisted Tours" and the "Saya" brewery were friends of mine and that I'd been doing some work for Gravity tours and the hostel they own during my stay.He brightened up a bit after that and never bothered me or anyone I was sitting with again.You see,La Paz is a town like many in the third world where who you know means everything.If you are connected then there is not much you can't get away with,legally or not.
I had a great reminder of that kind of power when some mates and I left Olivers Travells to go to another bar diagonally opposite after Ollies had closed.The Sol Y Luna is another cool bar that caters to the backpacker crowd.It too is owned by a 20-something Brit and yes,you guessed it,he is a mate of Olivers.Once we were settled and had dealt with the sight of six or so Bolivian transvestites partying hard by the mens washrooms,we sat back and were treated to an example of justice, Bolivian style.The five of us sat at a table by the front door a couple of steps away from the bar on one side with a view of the street through a huge window on the other.We were happily downing "Saya" pints and trying to get rid of the eight year old boy trying to sell us cigarettes and coca leaves(he works in Ollie's as well) when a group of guys came bursting through the crowd toward the door.One guy didn't quite make the turn and instead of exiting through the door he half exited through the large window next to our table before being pulled back in and thrown out the door into the street.Now it's winter here in La Paz and THE WINDOW WAS CLOSED!!
Waiting in the street were a couple of well armed police types who quickly had the poor,shitscared British bloke up against the wall outside of the bar.More cops arrived and in a jeep and we thought for sure he was in for a quick trip to the local prison.I had to stop an American guy who,full of foolish notions of freedom for all,was about to lend assistance to the guy being interrogated in the street.The poor bugger outside was pleading his case and was eventually let go when Olliver and his mate, whose pub had just ejected the prisoner, wandered over and had a quick chat to the most senior cop.After much headshaking and pointing toward the broken window the Brit was shown his way down the street and Ollie,his mate the pub owner AND all the the cops involved wandered into the pub and sat at the bar for a pint.
Later in the evening Matts' Bolvian girlfriend who worked with Matt at Oliies,introduced me to all the bar staff at Sol y Luna.They were all nice and even the cop in charge,who was still downing pints,seemed likeable.They filled me in on why the young Brit had been thrown out,seems that it's bad form to let your bar tab run too high without any payment for a week or so.The penalty,pay your bar tab by end of business tomorrow,pay your "fine" of 200 Bolivianos, to the cop at the bar tomorrow night and pay for the friggin window we pushed you through.Done!I only found out about the details of the punishment when I ran into the poor offender the next day at my favourite little coffee shop.He protested his innocence to me while emailing his parents at home for more money.Another stupid young backpacker having fun in Bolivia!!!
Advertisement: It's simple! Sell your car for just $20 at carsales.com.au
Live Search delivers results the way you like it. Try live.com now!
No comments:
Post a Comment