Bolivia

For the visitor

Bolivia is weird and wonderful. Everything about this land-locked country in the heart of South America is out of the ordinary, the kind of place where you start taking the strangest things for granted. Like sitting next to a goat on a bus or purchasing a dried llama foetus in the market (they are meant to rid houses of evil spirits).


La Paz

Even arriving in La Paz is no ordinary experience. The airport, at 4,000m above sea level, is the highest in the world, so high in fact that incoming flights almost have to ascend to land. The capital is one giant street market, where indigenous women in bowler hats and voluminous skirts will sell you everything you could possibly need. Only a few hours north of La Paz is Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world. In the southwest of the country, is the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s highest and largest salt lake – 8,000 sq miles of blinding white nothingness. South of the salt lake is a Salvador Dali landscape of deserts, volcanoes, bizarre rock formations, bubbling geysers, peculiar green plants and a blood-red lake filled with flamingoes. To the north and east, come face to face with a sloth or anaconda in the lush Amazon Basin. Or how about cycling down Coroico, officially the world’s most dangerous road, visiting the hollow silver mountain in Potosi, dinosaur footprints near Sucre, the vineyards of Tarija or Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid country around Tupiza.


Llamas


So finally, what of Cochabamba, my base for the foreseeable future? The department is known as the "breadbasket of Bolivia" and the city itself, the fourth largest in the country, is dubbed the City of Eternal Spring (which obviously means it's good for all year round visitors!). The exact translation of its name is the slightly less appealing "swampy plain".

Set in a bowl of rolling hills at a comfortable altitude, its inhabitants enjoy a wonderfully warm, dry and sunny climate, with an average temperature of 18oC. Economically, this region is of vital important, the Cochabamba Valley is the agricultural heart of the country and the tropical lowlands of Chapare to the east produces the raw material for cocaine (though I am advised that this is about 3 hours away from me, so I will not be affected directly). In tourist terms, the area is of limited importance to the economy. It is overlooked by most visitors (including myself on my travels in Bolivia in 2003).


Laguna Verde

Yet precisely because of this, it offers many effortless, off the beaten track opportunities. There are crumbling, old colonial villages, ancient ruins, beautiful national parks and some of Bolivia’s very best markets and festivals. This is also where you’ll find some of the country’s best chicha (and bearing in mind the tale below, be complimentary about it). The city itself has much new building, especially in the north, but the centre retains much of its colonial character. There are many fine churches and streets lined with old colonial houses with overhanging eaves, balconies wrought iron, windows and cool patios behind huge carved wooden doors. To the south of the main plaza are a wide range of colourful markets, which only add to the feeling that Cochabamba is more of an overgrown village than a modern urban centre.

A tiny bit of history, politics and economics

Just over a century ago a diplomatic crisis was literally brewing in La Paz over a glass of chicha, a fermented wheat bear. The new British ambassador to Bolivia had made the mistake of showing his contempt for the local brew and the incensed incumbent dictator had him led through the streets of the capital strapped naked to a donkey as punishment! When news reached Queen Victoria, Her Majesty was not amused. She demanded a map of South America, drew a cross through the country and declared "Bolivia does not exist!"

Though relations between Bolivia and the outside world have improved since then, on a global economic level, the country may as well not exist. It remains the second poorest country in Latin America (after Haiti). In 2001 a Government report highlighted the acute hardship faced by many of the population, stating that 5 out of 8 Bolivians live in poverty with inadequate basic food supplies, high illiteracy, and no access to transportation, irrigation or means of financial betterment. In the Altiplano, that’s the Andean highlands to you and me, family income averages £8 a month. A former World Health Organisation representative in Africa has stated that poverty in Bolivia is worse than in Ethiopia.

The country’s economic situation is only exacerbated by the fact that Bolivia’s main export earner gets right up the noses of the Western world. Literally. Once the world’s 3rd largest grower of coca (from which cocaine is derived), Bolivia has been forced to destroy 90% of the plant without the US sponsored campaign putting any realistic alternative means of subsistence in its place, leading to increased unemployment, even higher levels of poverty and frequent violent clashes between campesinos and the military.

Yet gas is an even bigger issue than coca even if it does not get headlines in the West: stocks of natural gas are estimated to be worth £41 billion (that’s 3½ times the country’s GDP). Not only an economic issue, it’s an emotive one. Many look back at Bolivian history, at what happened to the 62,000 tonnes of silver mined from Potosi’s now hollow mountain and fear a parallel – their worry is that the country’s natural resources will disappear overseas and the ordinary Bolivian people will see nada.

Some interesting facts:

• Bolivia’s GDP £12 billion (2003) places its economy between that of Afganistan and Mozambique
• The average wage is around £530
• Population 8 million
• Size approximately equal to France and Spain – combined. Its low density is explained by the high altitude and aridity in the west and south, and the remoteness of the wetter, forested areas of the northeast
• Transparency International rates the country as one of the world’s most corrupt
• It costs around £2,950 to produce a kilo of cocaine and the return on this investment can be as much as £29,500
• By 1935, just over 100 years after its proud independence, Bolivia had lost more than half its original territory. Land lost in wars with Peru, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. To lose land to one neighbour may be considered unfortunate; it’s unprintable here to explain losing to all five….
• Aymara women can be seen wearing their ‘JR Dallas’, a Stetson hat named after JR Ewing, the character from the hit 80s TV series Dallas
• Bolivians can roughly be divided up in to three distinct ethnic groups: about 60% are of pure indigenous stock; about a third are mestizos (people of mixed European and Indian ancestry); and the remainder are of European origin
• Bolivia is one of the world’s greatest regions of biological diversity, with 9 distinct ecosystems

If you fancy learning more, there are a couple of great links, including the Democracy Centre based in Cochabamba, BBC News from the Americas, British Government travel advice on visiting Bolivia, Oxfam's work in the country, Nick Buxton's weblog (bizarrely he is the brother of a work colleague of mine, it's a small world!) and the website of a Belgium couple who live in Cochabamba and work for NGOs (only in French and Spanish).

With thanks to my Footprint Bolivia for help in compiling the above, the No.1 guide book in my opinion!