INTO THE BOLIVIAN ALTIPLANO
Another one bites the dust!
Crossing from Peru into Bolivia was fast enough, about half an hour. This was also the first time an official asked me to produce my vaccination certificate. As I was reaching for it he then told me it didn’t matter, as long as I had one. A 90 day visa for Bolivia. I am only running about 1,000km of it on my route. Bolivia may be one of the small countries in South America but it’s still about 3 times the size as Germany. I wish every border crossing was this easy.
After crossing to Desaguadero, the border town of the same name also in Peru I realized that for some reason I could not change money on the Bolivian side, I really should have changed in Peru. No worries I just found an hotel, dumped my bags in the reception and told the owner I would be back soon as I walked across the bridge and back into Peru to change my money!
Many of the borders in Latin America are like this, lax and disorganized.
Costa Rica and Panama was also a stand out memory of inefficiency.
The further south I run the warmer, and more humid the daytime’s are getting. The evenings and nights are fairly mild now. The daytime the sun is pretty intense.
That first day I stopped for lunch at a restaurant in a marketplace just behind a military checkpoint in a village called Guaqui.
Guaqui is also the closest that Bolivia has to a port since it lost its port of Antofagasta to Chile. This port of sorts and at an altitude of over 3,600 metres, on Lake Titicaca and is shared with Peru.
At the height of the Incan empire Bolivia was perhaps the largest country in all of Latin Americas. Bolivia has lost much of its territory in disputes with Brazilian who took vast amounts of rubber rich land, Chilean took Bolivia’s vital port and in 1932 over 150 thousand square kilometres was lost in a war with Paraguay.
Today Bolivia has 9 departments or states.
I once read in a travel book that she is the least nationalistic of all Latin American countries, a comment I tend to agree with, not as much flag waving here. I wonder if the people have enough ‘ fire in their bellies. ‘
The lunch I enjoyed here was delicious, perhaps the best in all of my three and a half weeks in the altiplano country. It was a tasty chicken salad with more meat and salad than I would get in a whole week in Peru! Then when I was finished eating the owner gave me second helpings of salad and bread, rare hospitality in Latin America! Hospitality is mostly given by the ordinary people, and not by commercial establishment where I have had only a handful of such niceties in over a year.
The best meal in all of Bolivia!
I ran a marathon that first day struggling for breath the last couple of kilometres. The whole country is like a mountain pass, wide open plains averaging something like 4,000 metres, so unlike a mountain pass where one gets some respite with a nice long descent, here you just stay up there, so I will need to be able to do battle with the thin air and get used to oxygen debt!
That day I finished in the historic town of Tiwanaku, spiritual home of the Ayamara Indians.
The last couple of kilometres were a bit of a slog.
I wondered what would happen to me if I collapsed and fell by the side of the road… I probably would have got eaten by a pack of stray dogs I thought!
The very next day I had a very hard 35km run to finish at a toll booth just outside of the town of Loja.
I had a contact in south Bolivia to send my Heavy Bag.
The Heavy Bag system as I call my system of sending on a 20kg bag of spare equipment, replacement shoes is my system I devised in the absence of a support vehicle. To be able to send on this baggage from one end of the country to the other or shorter distances in larger countries. As regular readers know I send it as close to the next border as I can and then carry it over and so on. Having crossed to Bolivia a couple of days ago I left the Heavy bag at the hotel in the border town for a couple of days, so as I could run these two days before returning for it.
My research and planning needs to be accurate and thorough to keep this run going as flawless as it has been. Here my research told me that the Bolivian mail system is slow and unreliable.
Surely this should read Loco Loco! 4,028 m above sea level
Having booked a hostel night in the southern Bolivian/Argentine border town of Villizon I soon become friends with the management. I then decided not to risk my precious cargo by mail or courier. This decision was later justified as an Argentine map had not arrived in Villizon two months later.
To further complicate things I was told that my backup plan of sending my bag from bus terminal to bus terminal could only be done from la Paz.
I do this by using buses to send it on as cargo.. The absolute beauty of this system is that the bus stations hold my bag for up to a month in all of the other countries. Here in Bolivia I was later to find out it was only three days!
I made a quick overnight trip to La Paz with my Heavy Bag knowing this. In the bus terminal a lady for one of the bus companies told me that indeed I could not use the ‘ encomiendas ‘ as bus cargo is known here as because of this three day limit.
She was typically very dismissive, not interested in customer service or wanting to make suggestions nor wanting to bother a manager. Many people are just like this here in the services industry, scared stiff to rock the proverbial boat! Eventually a very efficient manager came along. His name was Marco, very sharp for he quickly weighed up my situation.
” Tony your bag will go to the Transit Police after three days, more trouble than its worth. Here is my cell number, just call me when you are near Villazaon and we will send it from here. In the meantime you just pay a daily storage! “
Fantastic, All sorted and all for about $15 including the Heavy Bags delivery to the border town of Villazon!
That night I stayed in a back packers hostel near the station and returned to my route the next morning.
You know there are some people that say I lack planning! Recently I had to endure a series of absurd almost abusive emails from an Irish Australian ’ man of wisdom ‘ who proclaimed himself to be a travel authority! I realised my mistake in confiding in him when this piece of trash posted some confidential discussions which we had on a forum. He ran for cover when I asked him just what mistakes have I made and just where is my so called lack of planning!
I reminded him that even when I was let down with a support vehicle literally at the start of South America, well I already had 2 plans ready to roll, one of these back up plans was only finalised a week before, just in case!
Much of this ongoing research takes dozens of emails.
My weakness is that I am a poor fundraiser and poor at seeking out sponsors, very different to poor planning.
September 6th, 2012 at 8:53 am
hey tony, the heavy bag could write a book itself after this adventure is over!!!! don’t be put off by the eejits who are giving you hassle!!!!! good luck, kevin