Postcard from Bolivia

Tuesday, 9 May:

Well, Bolivia is certainly a different experience from Laos, not least because there’s more familiarity about the Spanish names and words than the incomprehensibilities of the Sanskrit-based Lao language.

But there’s also a significant comfort difference, with much lower temperatures and humidity than in SE Asia.

There was a real wild wind last night, so much so that I felt I had to get up in the early hours and put extra pegs around the tent.

And it was a really fresh morning, with scalloped high clouds keeping the sun at a distance. Almost an Irish feel to it.

That wind kept up throughout the day, retaining a chill factor that had all of us wearing our fleeces, though I’m still very comfortable in shorts and sandals. It was hot whenever the sun came out and you were shaded somewhere from the wind.

Another distance was the lack of ‘jungle sound’. There is none of the constant chirping of the massive insect populations we’ve been used to over the last two weeks, though the five o’clock calls of the local cocks are the same as were in Laos.

Where we’re at just now is the plains before the mountains. We flew into Santa Cruz around 4.30pm yesterday, to a welcome from the local mayor, senator, and some other dignitories. There were also presentations from a local young dance troupe, a local singer who has travelled to many countries, and a local band of trumpets and guitars.

So far there’s quite a bit of green, but on very sandy soil, and to make the place fertile takes a lot of irrigation.

It is a poor country by South American standards, and that was reflected in the same kinds of shops in a couple of villages we drove through last night as we saw in Laos.

But, again, there is some evidence of great wealth, and I expect that the poor/prosperous division here is at least as wide as in Rio.

Tomorrow we head towards the mountains, which we can already see in the not too far distance. The highlight of that will be the largest salt plain in the world, on top of the Bolivian Plateau.

These Tangerine Orange Land Rover cars should look mighty impressive on the glaring salt.

Thursday 11 May:

Taking a car along a track, across a mountain range, that was probably originally made by a goat, and later widened possibly by a mule and cart is not on the face of it a sensible thing to do.

But when the alternative is a ‘road’ marginally better for a couple of dozen kilometres, and then a round of decent roads that take you well away from where you want to be, then the ‘rodera vereda’ IS often the only option.



It isn’t driving for the faint-hearted or those unsure of their steering ability. Because much of the twisty rock and sand tracks have terminally steep and unprotected drops. The occasional crosses and faded wreaths encountered from time to time indicate that even locals sometimes get it wrong.

For the G4 challengers, heading towards their final week of a month-long odyssey that has taken them through Thailand, Laos, and to Rio de Janeiro, the Bolivian section has meant truly serious and often awesome driving experiences.



And for this writer too. Especially since I was never one to be comfortable with a steep drop on one side of me. Actually, I think I got happier about it during this week.

Friday 12 May:

Maybe one of the indicators of the divide in Bolivia was when I used an ATM in the central square of the country’s administrative capital, Sucre, to draw out the equivalent of $6. I couldn’t stand in the alcove properly, because at my feet were sleeping a woman and her child, maybe he was eight or nine.

I got to Sucre after several days in the country areas, driving up from the flatlands of Santa Cruz. Along the way I went through small villages, rural areas with lots of smallholdings growing corn, oranges, running some cattle, occasional goats and sheep, and poultry.

I had gained an impression of a country which is rated as South America’s poorest, but just like Laos where I was a week ago, is moving upwards.

So every town and village, even if they seemed depressed and what we imagine to be third world from a European perspective, had a very visible school, more times than not brand new, and lots of kids were going to and from them.

Let’s be clear. Bolivia is not a third world country. It is modern in its politics, its industries, and its financial systems. It also is modern in its vision for its future.

But parts of it, and in those parts it seems, some of its people, are definitely of the third world. I suspect that it is a real part of the country’s vision that they should be brought into the new world, if that is what they want.

Maybe they don’t. But their children will. If for no other reason than they have access to television and the internet. And because they are being educated.

OK, maybe I’m harping on a lot on my peripheral articles from this Land Rover G4 Challenge on education. But it is one of the shining lights on this trip that included two countries not on the tourist map, not yet ‘developed’ that there was such an evident emphasis on education.

The children and their brains are the future of any country.

Here’s a contrast. On a 240 kilometre drive from a bridge on a river in the Bolivian boondocks, where we camped last night, we travelled on rough dirt roads for most of the trip, through some of the most magnificent scenery I have ever seen.

A colleague compared it to New Zealand, another to Utah in the United States, but with green. I myself saw reflections in part of Iceland and its volcanic lunar-like landscapes, except that the mountains and valleys would never be so dramatic on the moon.

Up on the tops of those mountains – we passed through 3,200 metres at one stage – there were isolated clusters of homes, mostly equivalent to the ‘tigins’ which were built for travellers in Ireland in the latter half of the 20th century, with the odd adult and several children on the roadsides. The adults were dressed in the local way, the women in bright patterned dresses over trousers and wearing similar brimmed felt hats as their menfolk, their skins leathered in colour and texture from the sun and their hard life. The children, rather distressingly, had their hands out, begging.

Not ten kilometres later we were welcomed into a village, which obviously knew we were coming. Their policemen diverted us into the town square, where the schoolchildren and their teachers, and a lot of the local citizenry, were crowded around our Tangerine Orange – very dusty at this stage – Land Rover vehicles.

Waiting to move to somewhere we could park, I wound down the windows to say ‘hola’. Many of the children, and some people that we took to be their teachers, had notebooks and pens at hand, and wanted to know where we were from.

I was travelling with team support driver Christel Akerman, who works with a big international engineering company. She had spent several years in South America, managing the negotiations and any subsequent difficulties in a number of hydroelectric projects. So she had pretty good Spanish, and was able to tell them what we were about.

One woman, whom I first took to be a reporter, but later realised was probably a teacher in the school, managed to ask me if I knew the name of Bolivia’s president. I knew his first name was Evo. And saying that was good enough. The next question was where I was from? “Ireland, Irlanda.” Notes scribbled.

“And the name of your president?” Even in Spanish I knew what she was asking. But could I remember the current Mary’s second name? Nope. I could remember Robinson, but it was ten kilometres later before I could recall McAleese.

But at the moment, I just said ‘Mary Robinson’. What the heck, she had been President, hadn’t she?

That same little village had a restaurant with a menu sandwich board outside which offered a three-course meal, including soft drink, for about 50 cents euro. But the village also had an internet café, a beautiful garden square, and teenagers dressed to the latest style alongside mountain women selling food in the street.

Before we left, I was one of many of my fellows collared by schoolkids to write in their exercise books our names and where we were from.

I suspect that the school project for the next week is going to be a very multi-country one.

Eventually we reached Sucre, where the independence of Bolivia from Spanish rule was declared. In fact, my hotel tonight – I’m away from camping for two days – is called the Independencia.

I washed and changed and went out and had a quick walk around the city, which is easy to do because it is built in very defined squares. The system of design is a chessboard, which was the common style in Spain at the time the city was built.

It is lively, has a great buzz about it, especially when the university kids come out from late lectures and congregate in the main square.

I found, though, my first encounter with high altitudes. We are 2,700 metres above sea level here, and though I walk a lot at home, and fast, I could feel myself getting tired and short of breath. It is going to get worse when we travel on Sunday to above the 4,000 metre mark. We have been warned to drink lots of water and take plenty of rest. At the end of the event, we’ll be at 4,600 metres, and for the competitors, that will surely be a torture.

But for now, I’m still taking in the sights and sounds of yet another new place.

I’ve just had two beers and a pizza in a pub as sophisticated as any in mid-Kildare for three euros, thirty cents. And on my tour around I bought a wooly hat and a pair of Thinsulate gloves for the equivalent of two euros fifty. I’m going to have a prices culture shock when I get home.

On Sunday we move out again, and I’m told it is going to get even more spectacular, and from the roads point of view, even more dizzying.

Sorry this postcard has been so long, but as George Bernard Shaw once excused himself for a similar situation, I didn’t have time to write it shorter. Also, apologies for a dearth of pictures. But I had a problem for the last three weeks because the charger for my iBook was broken, and I have had very limited capability of doing more than just storing my pix. I’ll add them to the piece as time allows.

Brian Byrne.