Part 2 ---
Now we are in Bolivia, a land-locked country east of Peru. It is more than 3 times bigger than Malaysia but with only 9 million people. It was part of thegreat Inca Empire, conquered by the Spanish, but gained independence in 1825. It is still a very poor country, with agriculture and mining the leading industries. 55% of the people are indigenous, 30% Mestizos (mixed blood) and 5% whites. Most are Roman Catholics.
Email 4
Three days ago we came to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in South America. Bolivia has something common with Malaysia - public toilets equally dirty. She has something common with China too - public toilets without doors.
At the border crossing the Bolivian immigration front office is about 10 feet by 15 feet in size. No computer; the lone officer just stamped our passports without even looking at our faces, and left the signed entry forms in an old shoe-box. Then we had to pay about RM 1 each as entry tax. They collected that in the bus. No receipt of course. Private mah. RM 1 is not an amount that we would complain but “sikit sikit jadi bukit juga” to the officers.
Most of you should have read an email with a power-point presentation on the most dangerous roads in the World. Topping the list is one in Bolivia showing two trucks meeting head-on on a single-lane mountain road, negotiating a tight bend, on a gutted gravel road surface, an unpaved road. One truck is 2 cm from touching the rock face while the other truck is tilting 15 degrees towards the 500 meter deep ravine, ready to go down anytime. This is the Death Highway linking La Paz and Coroico, built by prisoners of war in the 1930s. There were over 200 deaths a year as a result of accidents. In 1995, the Inter-American Development Bank rated the 80-km road the Most Dangerous Road in the World.
Well, two days ago we drove on this Death Highway.
“Siao eh? Pay money to risk your life?”
Bo-lah, peng-yu, I am not only kia-su, I am also kia-si. If I want to risk being killed for nothing, I don’t have to come to Bolivia, I just need to walk alone at midnight in any of the back lanes off Jalan Raja Laut. KL of course.
Actually this Death Highway is no more in “real use”. There is an improved new highway completed 2+ years ago linking La Paz and Coroico. This old road now attracts only foolish tourists like us and the "boh-kia-si" bikers. Those on mountain bikes, not motorbikes. They are promoting the road as the Death Ride for Bikers. We only encountered less than a handful of on-coming small vehicles during our travel there (a section of the original Death Highway) lasting about an hour. Little thrill. We also did not travel in a big clumsy bus but in 2 vans, smaller nimble vehicles. No thrill at all. The danger, hence the thrill, only arises when 2 big vehicles meet “head-on” at a sharp bend. That was history.
Nevertheless the new road to Coroico took us to a certain high ridge of the Andes where it was snowing very lightly. Snow in summer, highland mah! But snow "flowers" only, or 雪花, as the Chinese says. We made a snow stop. All the 50 year-old senior citizens turned into 5-year-old children jumping around to catch the flowers. Or may be they just shivered in the cold!
Yesterday my watch went dead, after working non-stop for 4 years. A few hours later my wife’s watch went dead too. I am sure she (my wife’s watch) committed suicide since her partner was dead. I never knew these electronics have feelings. Their love is so much stronger than that between their masters.
Yesterday we were in a town called Oruro to watch their annual dance festival. This Carnaval de Oruro might be less famous than the samba dance festival in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, it is still a famous one in South America. Started as a religious festival some 2,000 years ago. A UNESCO Heritage event. More than 30,000 dancers are involved, covering 2 days, with over 400,000 spectators.
Not many bikinis compared to the one in Brazil because it is colder here, but still an eyeful of cleavage and thighs. We stayed there for 4 hours. It also acted as an antiterrorist drill to the tourists. The parade was accompanied by the throwing of water bombs and firing of foam sprays. Everybody played the game. We had to protect ourselves with plastic ponchos. Good entertainment. Good day at work for the pick pockets too. A member's backpack was cut and she lost her compact camera.
In my earlier email I wrote about HAS. Well, this Senorita HAS is throwing her tantrums, may be she is love-sick. My digital SLR big Canon is having auto-focus problem, my other small Canon is having lens-cover closing problem, my polarizing filter’s spring gave way, rendering it unusable. I think they are scared of HAS. I lost my zeal in photography.
I am still not feeling too good, kind of congestion of the chest but no cough. I suspect I am having respiratory tract infection. I started to take an antibiotic yesterday morning. The antibiotic was given (gave, but I still paid for it) by my family doctor for such infection in case I need one on tour. Of course this is unethical, prescribing medicine "in advance". But he is my family doctor!
In La Paz, our 3-star hotel had this doctor-on-call service. May be girls-on-call too, no chance to call though. So last night I called for a doctor. A Spanish man speaking good English. He was not interested in my chest (what if I am a woman patient?) and insisted I had digestive tract infection, said to be very common with tourists. He said I had a lot of activity in my stomach. He even fixed his scope to my ears to listen to the activity in my stomach. I have not listened to my stomach before, so how could I know how much activity my stomach is supposed to have? Of course there is activity, I am not dead yet.
He gave me a jab, asked me to take a new kind of antibiotic, saying his choice is a better one; charged me US$ 45, medicine not included. What else could I do in an alien environment except to listen to him? This is a matter of life and death, man!
But I did feel better after that. Round One to Dr Iturri the Tourist Fleecer. This morning CK commented in Cantonese, "Ah Hon OK already lah, see how loud he talk!" Aiyoyo, I simply talked too loud, those with me for only a few days also concluded that. Must trim my vocal cords! But it is difficult to correct bad habits, especially if my wife is 95% deaf (only when I speak) and forever not able to hear what I say.
About my not feeling well, YL commented that this was because I was not "in harmony" with the Peruvian water and the Bolivian earth or in Chinese 水土不服. Yes, most likely.
That's all folks.
(21-2-09, La Paz, Bolivia )
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Email 5
First on the tour. The last 3 days we were on an adventure tour in a very dry region in south-west Bolivia. This is a top-rated adventure tour in South America. Most parts between 3,500 m and 4,600 m in altitude. We travelled by Toyota 4-wheel-drives.
The most famous attraction is the salt lake, called Salar de Uyuni, 11,000 sq km in size, much bigger than our Selangor state. The main salts are gypsum and halite. It also has half of the World’s reserve in lithium. Though it is a lake we can drive on it because of the hard 20-feet salt crust. Almost like a floating land mass. Yes we drove on the lake, in ordinary 4-wheel drives. Don't need James Bond's special BMW. Some distance into the lake the white glittering surface extends in all directions from us to merge with the sky. 360 degrees. Just nothingness but we and our 4-wheel-drives. Simply surreal.
When there is water on the surface it creates the most fascinating reflections. The salt crystals reflect the light from the sun, so the whole salt surface is glittery. Unfortunately all that glitters is not gold. It is so glaring that our eyes cannot stay open more than a few minutes if we don't put on our sunglasses.
That evening we stayed at the rudimentary salt hotel, where the walls, tables, chairs, beds, etc were made of salt blocks.
Over the next 2 days we were at the south western plateau, a region called Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve. Most of it between 4,200 m to 4,600 m in altitude. We covered a lot of distance over dusty rocky terrain, saw a live smoke-oozing volcano from a distance, different weathered rock formations, lakes of different colours (due to different minerals), geysers, hot-springs, pink flamingos, other highland animals, etc.
This 3-day adventure trip is certainly a 5-star attraction for nature lovers.
This region is a very cold place. In winter the temperature is known to drop to minus 50 degrees at night. Very very cold even in summer. We had to endure 2 cold nights without heating. We are going to a lower region later today. Most of us are glad that the cold is over.
The high altitude problem is bothersome, coupled with the cold it is disastrous. We feel like the Chinese saying "upper qi not connected to lower qi". The situation is tied to the word "press". When we go to bed in 5 layers of clothing and 3 layers of blanket each weighing 5 kg, we feel a heavy weight on top of us. We feel COMpressed. Hard to breathe. Since I don't own a pair of pajamas since adulthood, I have to wear my cotton pants to bed and they need to be REpressed the next day. Thinking of spending so much money to suffer we feel DEpressed.
Back to my health. Despite taking Dr Iturri the Tourist Fleecer's antibiotic I still don´t feel too good. At the start of the salt plain tour I started to cough with phlegm, and felt more congestion in the chest. Aiya, should have asked for a lady doctor in La Paz; she might be more interested in my chest. I had to consult a fellow tourist who is a doctor, who says it is OK to take 2 antibiotics together. I re-started taking the other antibiotic given by my family doctor and it finally proved that the old antibiotic worked well with me. Round 2 to Hon the Self-diagnosing Patient.
After more than a week on the highlands, the HAS or High Altitude Sickness is now a HAS been. Senorita HAS has left us for newer victims. Even my watch has sprung to life, and my wife’s too. I think the watches' batteries were affected by the cold and temporarily lost power. Nothing to do with HAS. Sorry lah, Senorita HAS for wrongly blaming you for our trouble. But that is human nature, we just have to blame others for our trouble.
The 3-day 4-wheel-drive trip gave me another problem. Because of the constant jumping up and down of the 4-wheel-drives over the rough terrain, sometimes with my head hitting the roof, plus the fact that there was no neck support for the seats, the bone spur on my 5th vertebra (osteophyte) also flared up, giving me some discomfort at the neck and occasional sharp pain in the ankle.
"Wa-lau, you so sick one eh?"
"Shh....shh....shh, please don't tell others lah!"
"Siao eh, pay money to suffer!"
(24-2-09, Laguna Colorado, Bolivia)
Email 6
This will be a short one. We are now in the cowboy town of San Petro de Atacama in Chile. We are not really seeing Chile; this town is just a transit to rest our bodies after 3 tough days at Salar de Uyuni and the highlands, before we go back to Peru. We spent one and a half days here. The cost of living is very high in Chile. A big bottle of mineral water costs less than RM 2 in Bolivia. Here it costs near to RM 7.50. And the town of San Petro is about the size of One-Utama. My wife says that. Her favourite past time at home is roaming the One-Utama Shopping Mall.
Both the Bolivian highlands and this Atacama region are very dry and dusty. Practically everybody in our group is now having some kind of cough or sore throat. LT lost her voice for days. Her cough syrup is beer, which is her lunch too.
For group tour to China, tourists often sing karaoke in the bus. We have some kind of musical performance too in the bus, called the Coughing Tune in G Minor. Everybody is coughing, short one, long one, single, double quick-step, loud one, not so loud one, dry one, phlegmy one…….. Quite a performance. Sorry that you miss the greatest musical performance of all time!
(25-2-09 San Petro de Atacama, Chile)
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End of Part 2 of the text, now some photos.
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