Rurrenabaque/La Paz, Bolivia

Monday, January 10, 2004:

I woke up at 6:30 and made it to the TAM airline offices at 7:00 sharp. Check-in for the flight to La Paz was at 7:30, but I wanted to be the first to the office to see if I could get myself a seat on the plane. I had an open-ended ticket and needed to confirm a return date. Because I went to the Pampas on Thursday and returned on Saturday to find that TAM was closed both days on the weekend, my only choice was to show up and try to get an open seat.

The TAM office did not open until 7:35. A few Bolivian passengers for the flight came by at 7:15, saw the office was still closed, and nodded their heads in evident unsurprised disgust. Apparently, the office should have opened earlier but, well, it just didn`t and that`s that. A half dozen people were there when a man in military uniform finally arrived and threw open the gates. I was at the front of the line and caught his eye. "Is there a seat?" I asked. He looked at my ticket. "No," he said, "it is full --- you must fly Wednesday" (TAM only flies once on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays).

I asked if he was sure. He said he was, shrugged, and told me I could wait around to see if there were any last-minute cancellations. I sat in the office and watched the man process the line. After fifteen minutes, as the line died down, a panicked-looking man ran in and told the agent that he and his two friends had wanted to delay their flight that day to Wednesday but hadn`t been able to get in touch with anybody over the weekend. Could a change be made? The agent nodded and scribbled a few lines on the tickets. The man ran off looking satisfied. I flagged him down at the door to confirm that he had just changed his departure date. He said he had.

I got in the line. When I reached the agent, I asked if a seat was now available. "No," he said. "But that man just changed his flight," I said. He nodded, half sideways and half up and down. He said something about too much luggage being on board. "You mean I can´t fly because there is too much luggage?" I asked. "No," he said (ambiguously). "There is no space."

Thoroughly disgusted, I left and went to the airline down the street, Amaszonas. They had two flights each day so perhaps they could get me back to La Paz. Although I would have pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 for a ticket, I could almost certainly obtain a refund (subject to penalty) on the TAM ticket from my travel agent back in La Paz. There was no way I could spend two more days waiting for the Wednesday flight in Rurre, particularly when TAM seems to cancel every other one of its scheduled flight anyway.

Lucky for me, Amaszonas did have a seat available for a flight leaving at 10:20 AM. That was nearly two hours behind TAM, but it would do. I paid my $52 and went for breakfast. I came back to the office at 9 AM, at which time they were to check my bags and take me and the other passengers by van to the airport. We didn´t leave until 9:45, as it turned out. I began to wonder if this would be an experience on par with my ever-so-precious moments with TAM.

At the airport, the TAM passengers were still waiting for their plane, which had not arrived as scheduled. Two hours behind and counting. I took a seat and looked up at the logo TAM had posted on the wall behind its processing booth. In it, a startled looking pelican is flying over the triple-peaked mountain of Illimani (over 6400 meters) in an electrical storm. A bolt of lightning hangs overhead. From one perspective, it looks like the bolt might be electrocuting the frazzled pelican. How very appropriate, I thought.

Although we were late to the airport, a whirring sound soon marked the arrival of our plane, a little 12-seater. In minutes, we were moving in a very efficient line out the door and on-board. At precisely 10:20, not a minute sooner or later, we took off. The TAM passengers were still sitting there in the airport with no indication as to when (or if) their plane would arrive.

The trip back provided staggering views of the jungle, mile after unbroken mile of green mountains and forest, with muddy brown rivers snaking through it all. As we reached La Paz, I could feel effects of the thin air on me again and I had to make a conscious effort to take deep breaths in and out.

We reached El Alto International Airport at precisely 11:20, as promised. The complex was luxurious in comparison to TAM´s ramshackle facilities. I grabbed my bag and headed to the curb outside to hail a cab.

A couple of Australian girls and an English guy were there talking to a driver. I had seen them in Rurrenabaque before and, of course, they had made up nearly half of the other passengers that were on the Amaszonas plane. "Want to share a cab?" one asked. I was in. The catch was that none of them spoke much Spanish and they could not understand something that their prospective cab driver was trying to tell them about their request to head to the center of La Paz.

I spoke to the driver. He told me that there were blockades of streets all throughout the city and that it was not possible to take us to the center. He could drive us to where one of the blockades began, but we would have to walk several blocks through the demonstrations before we would reach the other side, at which point taxi service would be questionable.

It was that or wait around indefinitely in the airport.

We got in. The driver told us that demonstrations had arisen earlier in the day after an announcement by the President of Bolivia pertaining to an increase in gas prices. After several minutes in the cab, we could see masses of people lined up along the highways in and out of the city. Apparently all access was blocked and there was no way to take the same vehicle in our out. There was smoke in the air and the occassional bang of something small (fireworks? aerosol cans?) exploding.

We left the cab and headed into the bustling, chaotic streets. Some people waved flags and banners. Many just sat there on the side of the road. Every so often the sound of mass chanting arose in the near distance. We kept walking through people (and stray burning tires) until we came to a series of toll booths in the highway. Since there was no traffic, they were unmanned. There was, however, an enormous line of police in full riot gear (shields, helmets, rifles) standing at attention and watching the crowd. It was at this point that I began to wonder if the bangs I had heard were rubber bullets or tear gas discharges of some kind.

A reporter and a camera man ran up to us and asked us where we were coming from. I was the only person who understood what she was saying and I told her that we had walked the last 4 blocks while trying to get to the center of the city from the airport. She asked a few more questions, seeming a bit bored to hear that we did not really have an opinion with respect to the demonstrations. We were just stuck in it. But she did offer us useful advice as to which way to walk to find a taxi (possibly). "Be cafeful," she said as we walked away, "its dangerous."

"You´ll probably be on the news tonight," said one of the Australian girls.

"Probably," I said. "They always pick the most ignorant people to interview, don´t they?"

After speaking with one of the riot police, we snuck through a hole in a fence and climbed down a hill to one of lower streets under the main highways. There were several cabs there and we found a driver who said he would try to get us to the center, though he made no guarantees. "Its very dangerous," he told us. As we drove down toward the center through eerily deserted barrio streets, we say large fist and head-sized rocks in the middle of the road. There were some signs of broken glass as well. Everybody in the car was looking out for signs of hostility, but there was nothing. We reached a point near the center without incident and got out. I left the group and walked toward a comfortable (but still only $8) hotel I had heard about on one of the better streets in the area. Life in the city center was completely normal. The people up in destitute El Alto were apparently the ones most up-in-arms (to different degrees, literally and figuratively) about the gas prices.

Over lunch I deliberated on what I would do next. I liked La Paz but wasn`t sure I wanted to stick around for long in the current climate. I also needed to start heading south if I was ever going to make it to Argentina and, in March, to Africa. On the other hand, it was unlikely that I would be able to get out of La Paz for the next few days. I needed an activity. I decided to sign up to bike down the World`s Most Dangerous Road. Everything I had read about this made me think it was absolutely crazy, but I also felt like I had to do it before leaving La Paz or I would feel like I was missing something. Besides, the vast majority of accidents occur with large buses and trucks that are nearly as wide as the road itself. The few people who injure themselves or die while on biking trips usually fall off a ledge while trying to get a good look over it --- while off of the bike. I argued back and forth with myself, then happily signed up for it.