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March 17, 2006
DISPATCH FROM ABROAD More to Bolivia than Butch and Sundance
By MARK WAITE
SUCRE, Bolivia - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their fate in this country, shot dead while planning the holdup of a payroll transport near Tupiza in southern Bolivia on Nov. 7, 1908 - or so goes the legend. Communist revolutionary Che Guevara also perished in Bolivia, shot by members of the Bolivia Second Ranger Battalion in La Higueras, in the eastern lowlands on Oct. 9, 1967. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid went looking to rob the loot being transported by the silver and tin mines. Guevara eyed Bolivia as a place to start his revolution in South America, since it was located in the very heart of the continent. I was intrigued by Bolivia, the poorest and, from a tourist's standpoint, the most economical country in South America - triple the size of Montana. It's seen as the most "authentic," with the largest indigenous population. The CIA Web site on Bolivia states 30 percent of the population is Quechua Indian, 25 percent Aymara Indian, 30 percent mestizo and only 15 percent white. Evo Morales, the former leader of the coca farmers and the first indigenous president of Bolivia, had just been elected when I arrived. He is a leftist who called President George W. Bush a terrorist in an interview with al-Jazeera television. I read over the Internet the Christmas season might be a good time to visit Bolivia, as the natives would be busy celebrating the holidays and may not be on strike, a common occurrence in the country. During my arrival in Sucre on Christmas Eve morning a heavy downpour greeted me unceremoniously. Travel in Bolivia during the rainy season, from November to March, would be an added adventure. Sucre was founded in 1538 and today has a population of slightly less than 200,000 according to the government Web site, Boliviaweb. Like Nye County, which has two courthouses, Bolivia has two capitals. Sucre is the constitutional capital but only has the Supreme Court and treasury. La Paz is the home of all other federal offices. The city is a colonial gem. UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1991. Besides the many churches and Spanish red tile roofs, colorful, local Indian women sat on sidewalks, many begging for donations, looking sadly out of touch with the mainstream economy. Outside of the rain, the altitude of just over 9,000 feet was comfortable. The trick became when to find the many churches open for a visit. The Church of San Francisco was the only one open all day for church services. Outside of town, the large courtyard dominated by La Recoleta, a former convent, barracks, prison and now museum originally founded by the Franciscan order in the early 16th century, afforded a great view of the red tile roofs of the city. The Metropolitan Cathedral on the main square included a beautiful statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, studded with rubies, emeralds and other precious gems, but photography wasn't allowed. A stately building on the square, the museum of Dr. Alfredo Gutierrez Valenzuela, donated to the local university by the family of the late doctor rather than pay taxes in 1992, housed a valuable collection of European marble and bronze sculptures and furniture. On another side of the plaza was the Casa de Libertad, where the Bolivian declaration of independence was signed on Aug. 6, 1825. The inside featured paintings of the Bolivian presidents, they needed lots of room on the walls for all the coups in Bolivian history. There were also paintings of the revolution of May 25, 1809 in Sucre, then known as Chuquisaca, and the pivotal Dec. 9, 1824 Battle of Ayacucho, Peru, which ended Spanish rule in South America. Simon Bolivar, "The Great Liberator" stared down from a huge painting in the center of the room. After three tries I found La Merced Church open late one afternoon on a rare, totally sunny day. Elaborate altarpieces covered the walls with Christian themes such as the crucifixion of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the angels. Paintings on the walls by Melchor Peres Olguin, a famous Bolivian painter, and what's reported to be the most beautiful pulpit in Bolivia, were attractions for a professional photographer on the scene with a tripod and an array of lenses. The roof was a beautiful spot for a few tourists to take self-portraits, with an excellent view of the steeples and rooftops of the city. A tourist representative at La Recoleta advised me to try a restaurant called Rumi Huasi for some local specialties. I sat down in the courtyard and ordered a combination dish of picante de pollo, picante de cola and picante de lengua, chicken, tail and tongue respectively, cooked in a delicious, thick, spicy sauce. A more recent tourist attraction in Sucre is the world's largest paleontological site, with more than 5,000 impressions of 320 different dinosaurs just outside of town, a site discovered in October 1994. The tourist representative suggested I try taking the ferrobus, a small bus with 26 seats fitted to ride on train tracks for the journey to Potosi. It would take twice as long - six hours instead of three - but the 106-mile trip was supposed to be more scenic as we traveled through the mountains. I arrived at the station for the 8 a.m. departure in a hard rain and paid my 25 Bolivians, a little more than $3. However, about an hour later we spent about two hours waiting while crews cleared rocks off the train tracks that ran on cliffs overlooking the Pilcamayo River. Eventually we couldn't go any farther as a landslide that would take days to clear blocked the path. It was hard to believe that much earth could have fallen on the tracks in the two days since the last train trip but then it rained hard in the area. The conductor arranged to have us transported back to Sucre in two motorized rail carts used by train workers who maintain the track. A few passengers on the ferrobus and I pooled our money and took a taxi for the two and a half hour trip to Potosi, into the bleak, cold altiplano at 13,292 feet. The main cathedral was closed for renovations but I was fortunate to catch a priest leaving San Martin Church, who let me in for a tour. I understood why church officials were using tight security; four of the large paintings of the 12 apostles on the wall were stolen. The priest explained the impressive gold altarpiece was transported from a rural church burned down by evangelical Christians. Down the street at La Merced Church a band playing traditional Andean instruments performed for a noontime church service in which parents and their children attended with their toys, perhaps a festival of the holy innocents Dec. 28. Some coca tea at a rooftop restaurant next door seemed to hit the spot in the high altitude. I passed up the chance for a $10 half-day tour of the Cerro Rico, the once fabulously rich, silver mine on the mountain dominating Potosi. I didn't want to go underground and a Canadian tourist described the tour as rather depressing. Instead, I took the tour of the Casa de la Moneda, paying the 20 Bolivianos, less than $3, for the obligatory two-hour tour. I expected a boring tour of a coin collection but found a fascinating glimpse into Bolivian history. The mine was opened in 1572, less than 30 years after Indian Diego Huallpa discovered the rich silver ore on the Cerro Rico towering over Potosi. In the late 1600s Potosi was the largest city in South America with 200,000 inhabitants and 86 churches, about double the population today. Potosi was also declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. Our tour guide led us into a large, cellar-like room with religious paintings, explaining an anonymous, indigenous artist painted them, which was a way of converting local Indians to the Christian faith. She focused on a painting of the Virgin of the Mountain, the detail showed Indian miners working and Spaniards relaxing nearby. By 1773 machines were imported for flattening silver ingots to one millimeter thick by huge grinders turned by mules on the floor below. The early coins were 95 percent silver, she said, it didn't matter if they weren't perfectly round. A ship inside a glass represented the Atocha, the ship that sank off the coast of Florida with a $400 million cargo in 1622, of which half was silver from Potosi. There were other exhibits to occupy our two hours: armaments from Bolivia's three wars against its neighbors in the 19th and early 20th century; a display of 300 minerals; steam-powered machines imported from Philadelphia to stamp coins from 1869-1909 and a trick treasure chest to confound pirates. Tourists were allowed to stamp their own coin, but a Taiwanese coin collector turned down the offer when they didn't have any silver left in the souvenir shop. Ironically, while Bolivia minted Spain's coins for 300 years, the guide explained Bolivia's coins are now minted in Spain. It was another six hours by bus west into the desert to Uyuni, where I was surprised to find large groups of backpackers taking tours of the salt lakes, volcanoes and geysers near the Chilean border. I booked a three-day tour for $65 but it was put off until New Year's Day as there wasn't any gas for the tour vehicles on New Year's Eve. A Bostonian operating a delicious pizza parlor at the Tonto Hotel, Chris Sarage, said Team America scoped out the Salar de Uyuni to try for a new land speed record - the largest salt lake in the world at 4,085 square miles, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, lying at a chilly 11,995 feet, but Sarage said they couldn't buy the jet fuel as there wasn't an airport nearby. An odd collection of rusty trains sat a couple of miles outside of the city. It was worth spending New Year's Eve in Uyuni. I ate a customary Bolivian holiday dish of pig roast, corn-on-the-cob and sweet potatoes. Later a Bolivian folkloric band entertained a very lively group of backpackers in a small restaurant. I learned that whiskey and beer can pack quite a punch at 12,000 feet. About 2:30 a.m. locals danced through the streets to a marching band. It had rained in the desert as well, requiring the driver to travel slowly through the few inches of water in the salt lake. The driver put plastic bags around the engine block to protect it from salt. We stopped at the salt museum, with large sculptures made of salt, and the salt hotel, where I could've stayed for $20 per night with all meals, in a hotel with salt furniture. The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah doesn't have such tourist attractions. Later, about 15 Toyota Land Cruisers all pulled up at Isla de Pescado for a barbecue lunch, a small, hilly, very photogenic, cactus-studded island with beautiful views of the dazzling, flat, white salt lake. We had a view the second day of Ollague volcano, 19,061 feet tall, which looked a little like Mount Charleston. There were lagoons populated by flocks of flamingos. A biting-cold wind limited our views of the Laguna Colorado, a lagoon colored red by microscopic organisms. The "stone tree," a weird rock formation, was another photo opportunity. My driver and cook chewed coca leaves for energy as we drove through the desert in the high altitudes, though a chew convinced me it probably wouldn't be anything exciting for a drug user. The third and final day we were awakened at 4 a.m. for a trip to the geysers at daybreak, the highest point of the tour at 15,827 feet. There were rather lukewarm hot springs later for a dip and nearby, Licancahur volcano, looming above the Laguna Verde, or green lagoon at 19,370 feet, almost 5,000 feet higher than Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the continental U.S. The Bolivian capital city of La Paz, with 790,000 residents, is situated in a big bowl as protection from the cold at 11,780 feet. It was founded in 1548 but has only a few colonial buildings. In good weather, there's great views of snowcapped Mount Illimani, one of Bolivia's highest peaks at just under 21,000 feet, in my case it was visible only one day. The road into the bowl led through El Alto, an ugly, poor city of 650,000 people. My mini-bus driver found a taxi for me as a security measure before I stepped out into the packed streets. Shoeshine boys in ski masks solicited my business in central La Paz. Aymara Indian women wearing bowler hats sat almost motionless all day selling items on sidewalks. There were some good restaurants, even a Burger King, on the main street, the Prado. It was a breathless walk up a steep hill from the Plaza San Francisco to my hotel on the tourist strip along Calle Sagarnaga, where there were numerous travel agencies, Internet services, good restaurants and souvenir shops. A four-hour bus trip to the nearby town of Sorata in a beautiful valley at 8,700 feet at the foot of the snowcapped Cordillera Real was washed out by four days of rain. A guide said I could get above the clouds and see the mountains from a lagoon at 13,650 feet, but after paying $20 and taking after a two-mile hike up there, he "surprisingly" remarked I must be out of luck that day, there was only fog and mist. I didn't envy the driver of the four-wheel drive. I sure wouldn't have driven the path to the trailhead in the slippery, muddy conditions for 10 times the price. A truck jackknifed on a cliff on the way out of town, leaving the road back to La Paz closed for the afternoon, a sign roads could become impassable in the rainy season as well. If it weren't for the weather the Ex-Prefectural Hotel, a beautiful, colonial lodge with stain-glass windows of scenes of Bolivian peasant life in the restaurant and a fireplace in the spacious living room, would be an ideal place to write that book. The weather also forced a cancellation of a trip to Mt. Chacaltaya, the highest ski lift in the world outside La Paz at 17,533 feet; if it was raining in La Paz it would be snowing there. I also decided against an excursion to Coroico, in one of the subtropical valleys east of La Paz, down what's called the most dangerous highway in the world due to the high number of traffic accidents. That left a one-day tour of Tiwanaku, Bolivia's most important archaeological site 12 miles southwest of Lake Titicaca. The Tiwanaku, ancestors of the present day Aymara tribe, existed from 1580 B.C. to 1200 A.D., its glory period was from the time of Christ to 700 A.D. Wilson, my guide, explained that unlike Machu Picchu in Peru, which was a fortress for the Inca conquest, Tiwanaku was a religious place. The temple of the snake contained more than 100 heads of priests and animals around the inner walls. The portal of the sun, a wall in which the sun shines directly through on Sept. 21, was another photographed site. Another temple contained a few statues with belts that were a calendar. A museum contained pottery, exhibits of clothing, instruments and a mummy. President-elect Morales was to attend a special ceremony here Jan. 21, the day before his official inauguration in La Paz. Tiwanaku had a more moderate, humid climate near the lake, good for growing crops, Wilson said. As to how the huge stone structures were constructed, Wilson said one theory was the Indians learned from the Egyptians, such knowledge was transported to South America by the Polynesians. That sounded like a good topic for an Art Bell radio show, I thought. Finally, I visited Copacabana, a tourist town on the shores of Lake Titicaca, which lies at 12,383 feet. Tourist literature calls it the world's highest navigable lake, measuring 3,200 square miles, with the lake 125 miles long by 69 miles wide - and at its widest point it's hard to see the other side. Copacabana had a beautiful church on the main square. A peak outside town was another religious site. The next day, backpackers crowded onto two boats headed to Isla del Sol, which the Incas believe was where the world was created. The rains let up out on the island for the afternoons. All but a handful of the 50 tourists on the bottom deck of the boat were South American, mostly Argentine tourists. Children posed for photos with llamas for tips on shore. I picked a hostel for $2 per night on a ridge with terrific views overlooking both sides of the lake, a steep walk up an ancient, stone path to 13,032 feet. A walk over a ridge to the north end of the island led to the Temple of the Sun, with a collection of temples constructed of brick, much like the Inca ruins in Peru. The Bolivian troops didn't get me, like Che Guevara or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but the rains almost did. It taught me a lesson about visiting a country in the wrong season. Outside of the islands on Lake Titicaca and the western desert, the rains made it difficult to visit this fascinating South American country. |
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