Rioting La Paz style

Welcome to Bolivia, and what a welcome we were given.

Things didn’t exactly start well when 4 of our party of 20, had trouble at the border. Two of the gang had lost the white slip which was given to them on arrival, which is the document the immigration officials use to assess the date of arrival and number of days a visitor is permitted to stay. Stamping this in a passport is of course the norm, but then demanding fees for lost forms wouldn’t be possible, some traits of African officialdom sadly all too apparent here.

Next up was an Australian who had only been given a 15 day stay but had stayed for 19. Here, I think she was fortunate with the local bribery system as a $15 fine (supposed to be $1 per day) is still significantly better than the deportation stamp one might expect from some countries, the UK and Australia among them.

The harshest crossing though was for Theresa, one of the pair of the very well presented, and quite cute, Australian ladies who was the victim of a stolen bag in Cusco. As well as losing a camera and credit cards, she unfortunately also lost her passport, along with entry paper etc. That she had a second, diplomatic passport, accompanied by a police report of the stolen passport and a photocopy of the stolen passport and entry papers were not enough for the officious official who saw the opportunity for some dash. Unluckily for him, Theresa is an old hand having worked in the developing world for over 4 years, and understood exactly how to play the game. Lots of patience, lots of smiles, lots of shrugs and the official soon worked out that a bribe wouldn’t be coming anytime soon.

So it was with some relief that we all made it into Bolivia and on to the beauty that is Lake Titicaca. The town on Copacabana failed to live upto it’s name, but was pleasant enough in its own way. Bolivia is as cheap as chips and we drank beer at £1.60 a pint, tourist prices I’m sure, but still a fraction of the price back home. Also took in a trip out onto the lake to visit a community of 1000 or so who live on islands made of reeds. These guys have a medical centre, a school, and are entrepreneurial enough to have set up a bar and a small hotel for tourists. As ever, the locals demonstrate their ingenuity at coming up with ways to make a few quid.

But it is fair to say the real fun started when we hit La Paz, the 2m strong capital city of Bolivia. Bolivia itself is famous for a few things, such as harbouring Nazis, radical politics and coups and we got a wee taste of Bolivian politics when we entered the outskirts. I had heard only the day before from a Brit living in Argentina that things were a bit twitchy at the moment, after a new president had encouraged his people to stand up for their rights at a local level. This apparently meant that some communities were blocking roads when their perceived injustices remained unaddressed.

I have no idea what was behind the issue that we stumbled on, but let me take you through the sights we saw and the reactions from all around. Things started to look a bit different when we noticed groups of young men running in between the near stationary traffic, in the same direction we were going. Some were covering their faces and next we started to hear fire crackers being thrown around. Initially I wasn’t overly worried as the youth seemed to be doing more running round that actual rioting. The road was two lanes both ways and there was a reservation in between.

Next up it became clear there was the potential for trouble as you could see a group of youths, maybe 100 strong, having a standoff with fully tooled up riot police. Next, the lads grew bolder, they all started to cover up their faces and soon started throwing rocks at the police line. The police retaliated with rounds of tear gas and this was pretty effective at pushing the rioters back, though some bolder rioters did kick the tear gas back in the direction of the police lines.

Whilst this was going on, the mood on the truck had gone from one of interest, to “let’s photo this, this could make CNN later”. One of two were a bit more worried, insisting we put up the windows and one screaming to the driver that everyone else was heading down side roads except our truck and a bus in front of us. When we eventually did turn off the road it became apparent that a pretty tasty riot was developing and we hastily carried on our way, on a parallel road where every other fleeing motorist has also headed,

By Lagos standards it was pretty tame, no live firing, no machetes, no vehicles on fire, but still, a feisty little scene for the hippy bus passengers to enjoy on our arrival to La Paz. To show just how normal and run of the mill this evidently is, we encountered around 20 marketers dressed as Zebra within 2 minutes (and within earshot of the riot) still working away without a care in the world. Can you imagine rioters being tear gassed in London and on a parallel street, life carrying on as normal?

OK, nothing much else to report. In the next few days I hope to cycle “The death road”, which is a tourist must and Le Paz hosts the jail that you can pay to get into and have a tour by the inmates…they are apparently in charge and the authorities simply leave them to it. After recent events, it could be an interesting few days!