Upside-down with our pockets shaken out
Trip Start
Sep 25, 2007
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Trip End
May 29, 2008
Oruro,
Bolivia
Sunday, February 3, 2008
People tend to overreact when you mention rabies, and they said I needed to seek medical attention immediately. We dutifully went to a local clinic which specialised in emergency shots (BYO needle) in La Paz, where they told me I needed to start a short course of rabies vaccine. They wanted to give me one made from brains of infected mice, which I duly declined having read the small pamphlet the travel clinic had provided us on rabies before we left wich warned against it.
So off we went in a taxi to the swanky part of town, to a private clinic we were referred on to. Without hesitation, the receptionist at the private clinic sent us off, along with a long set of elaborate directions, to a chemist which had a vaccine bank.
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Slightly over an hour later, having polled a large number of people as to the location of the chemist, we found it 8 blocks straight up the road from the private clinic. They had a safe rabies vaccine, and luckily the instructions came in English, so we quickly read up on post exposure immunisation requirements, and bought 2. I had the first at the chemist, and the second I took back to the hostel and left in the fridge for 3 days before getting the original clinic to administer. The doctor there couldn´t get over the fact we´d paid so much (about NZD 85) for the shots, and thought it was a great joke.As a footnote, Edward, the word you were after in Mexico was ´antiseptico´ - ideally ´´necesito antiseptico para una mordedura´´ - I need antiseptic for a dog bite - but ´antiseptico´ or ´iodino´ should have done the trick. And rabies hardly ever lies dormant for more than about 2 years, so you´re probably in the clear.
In La Paz we also managed to get or visas extended to 60 days, after three trips to immigration, a lot of confusion and contradictory information, visiting about 6 different counters, paying a small fee, waiting a long time, and ultimately leaving our passports their overnight and luckily getting them back. I suppose the bureaucracy is keeping people off the streets...
From La Paz we visited a large pre-Inca Tiwanaka ruins site not far from the shores of lake Titicaca. The site contains a large astrological observatory, a ceremonial temple, a pyramid of about 200m accross and 18m high, as well as a number of statues.
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Impressive stuff, although 60% of the remains were pinched for building materials or overseas museums over the last 500 years, all the precious metal has been stripped out, and when missionaries arrived they ordered slaves to cover most of the ruins with earth. Housed in the nearby museum is an impressive 8m stone monolith from the site covered in intricate carvings (dwarfing the one we saw from Easter Island) which for years stood outside the football stadium in La Paz, and still bears the marks where bottles were thrown at it and where it took stray bullets during various political upheavals. The ruins are thought to be remains of the capital of a culture which flourished around the shores of lake Titicaca between 2000 BC until 1200 AD, when it began to break down after extended draught and wars and was absorbed by the Aymara and Quechua races, which in turn came under tenuous Inca rule just before the arrival of the Spaniards. It was complete with a port, currently being excavated, which now lies 20km from the shores of the lake - things move.The next day we eventually made it out of La Paz to Oruro, after a fantastic effort on Nick´s part, standing in que at the bus station for just over 3 hours to get us tickets, while I guarded our luggage and read a terrible paperback. We knew that Carnival was a big event - probably the biggest event in South America outside the Rio Carnival, but we hadn´t realised what a marathon the Entrada - the opening procession - would be.
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We overslept on Saturday morning after the long slow bus trip, and rushed at 10am out worrying we´d missed half the action. We bought tickets in the tiered seating and had made it to our seats about 30 minutes later, having got drenched with waterbombs and foam in the process. You are fair game if you walk in front of anyone, so all the locals just climb into their seats from behind, leaving the gringos to try and use the overcrowded walkways down the front and get soaked.Once seated though, we quickly began to feel comradery with those seated around us. Soon, the people in the seats across the street were the enemies, and the waterbombs we threw at them were daring attacks or just retaliation. I managed to deflect about 10 hits by having my coat across my front and raising it over my head at the last minute, but I was struck once squarely in the face after shouting ´´you all suck! My mother could throw better than that, come on!´´. More annoying were the cans of foam - it was like letting thousands of children loose with cans of carpet cleaner.
Carnival is a weird, enormous, spectacular event which I can most liken to a mixture of the Hero and Santa Parades and the Wearable Art Awards. Part of what makes it impressive is its sheer size. We sat there for 12 hours while thousands and thousands of people from all over Bolivia danced and marched past in amazing costumes, with brass bands every 200m or so, only to discover that it went until 2am. By 10.30pm we were tired with freezing stiff arses from sitting on cramped planks, and Nick was slightly the worse for wear having had so much Bolivian hospitality pressed upon him in the form of beer and lots of Sangani - a clear local spirit made from grapes (and 40%), so we gave up and went to bed, everyone else by then being completely trolleyed, and vomit becoming a hazard for those not at the top of the stands.
This morning Nick had his money purse taken - first we were both soaked in the faces with foam - which was bad form as we weren´t actually at the carnival, just walking down the street, then a women stuck her hand in his polar fleece pocket, and while he caught it and stopped her someone else must have lifted the cash from his trousers.
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It wasn´t much - just local currency enough for the day´s expenses, everything else being stashed more safely, but still a bit of a damper on the day. The day before someone beneath the stands had tried to tug away our daypack, but since Buenos Aires we´ve been used to keeping a leg through the shoulder strap when we´re sitting down, so it didn´t happen for them. A British girl in the internet cafe was just saying she´d had her camera nicked here, and that yesterday she saw an older women tourist targeted by several youths who kept spraying her in the face with foam until the could pry her video camera and digital camera off her, so so far we´ve been relatively lucky I suppose.Carnival was spectular, but after the mugging and the dreadful food here its hard to have much affection for Oruro, and we´ll be please to leave for Cochabamba tomorrow (the Gods of Public Transportion willing), which is our last stop before the jungle.
