Another Month Has Passed...

Equal to my love of places whose public transportation can always find room for one more, is my love of places that house markets where twenty simple steps can put you face-to-face with potential purchases of everything from underpants to Coca leaves (oh how the American government would loath to know how often these delicious leaves are chomped up in my mouth), dishware to freshly cooked up cow intestines, and herbal remedies to hand-woven alpaca legwarmers. The multitude of legwarmers sold and sported in the streets of Bolivia desperately begs to question if this fabulous 80s fashion trend wasn´t in fact influenced by our llama-herding, Andean neighbors to the south.

I rolled into La Paz at the pitch black 6am hour to find the world´s highest capital city blanketed in snow. Snow in July is a concept completely foreign to my logical sensibilities...but with its bitter cold, came warm memories of Christmas in Northern Michigan, snowfort making, and the simple, peaceful, stillness of freshly fallen snow.

After being robbed and promptly hightailing it out of town on my previous attempt, I´m giving La Paz another go...and the crisp starkness of this morning´s sunrise, illuminating the orange-brick buildings that percariously coat the natural crater of La Paz with a chaotic layer of human development, was enough to begin melting the cold heart I had toward the city. La Paz is perhaps the only city in the world literally built inside a crater, with the peaks of Bolivias highest mountains shadowing the city in their ever snow-capped gloriousness. Other than shooting the world´s most dangerous highway tomorrow by mountain bike (a day trip outside of La Paz), and receiving my family who will arrive to visit and travel with me on Saturday, I´m now waiting with open arms to see what else this city has in store for me.

Of things lost and stolen...

If you are lucky enough to travel in South America without having your camera lifted, there surely must be someone up above looking out for you. Clearly, there is no one up above looking out for me. To go into much detail would include resurrecting memories put to rest months ago, but the story outline is amusing and worth a brief retell.

Border crossings have never been my forte. The transverse between Peru and Bolivia during my cross-continental voyage was no exception. I crossed in midday and all formalities, exit stamp, entry stamp, black market money exchange, etc went according to plan. On the way to meeting up with a collectivo (informal, privately owned minivans that are a widely used form of transport all over the "developing world") I began chatting with a friendly woman, or rather, she began chatting with me. Both heading in the same direction, to La Paz, we ended up in the same car. The three hour ride included some pleasant small talk between us, general niceties and the like. Rather than interpret a little everyday niceness as a cause for alarm, I generally welcome these interactions as opportunities to practice a little Espanol. The collectivo dropped us in Cemerario, a not so charming barrio of the Nation´s Capital. I immediately set off in search of internet to get the contact information of a friend who I was planning on staying with. My border crossing amiga was there once again, by my side, advising that I best get the heck out of dodge (in this case Cemetario) due to its less than hospitable reputation. "I`m on my way home, there a nice internet cafe along the way, I can drop you there. Lets go" she said. Although, in reality, it was more like "Me voy a mi casa y hay una buena tienda de internet alla. Puedo dejar te alla, si quieres. Vamos." And this is how silly trusting me got properly scammed.

Within thirty seconds our taxi pulled over and an over-sized, not-so-gentle-man waving a "Policia" identification card climbed in...and thats when the real fun began. I was accused of transporting drugs across the border and a virtual explosion of yelling and chaos ensued; a whole slew of exciting details to tedious to recount. A quarter-hour of struggle and screaming boils down to...me refusing to give up my things to this crook...who was both demanding to search them and telling me he was taking me to the "station"...my "friend" insisting that I had to do as he said...and me begging the the taxi driver incessantly to please pull over the damn car (that he was just driving aimlessly along seemingly deserted city streets) so I can flee. I have heard rumor more than once that there are actually criminal rings that function under the guise of "police stations", entire centers of cons artist posing as officers. I certainly didn´t want to end up at one of those. Eventually, I folded to the policia´s aggressive demands mainly on the grounds that I was helpless and he could, quite literally, kill me if he had the mind to. I gave up my things one by one, handing them over so he could crudely rub them all over his fat nose in a feigned effort to "sniff out" any illegal substances. It all climaxed in one final burst of yelling and demands, ending with the taxi pulling over bearly long enough for the woman to reach across, open my door, and literally shove me to the curb. They were respectable enough actors. It certainly didn´t occur to me until after the taxi sped away and I was stranded camera-less, lost, and crying on some unknown La Paz side-street that surely all of them; the taxi driver, the "police officer" and "my friend" were accomplices to the crime.