One Coat Missing!

Friday 26 January

We were up a little earlier this morning as we were being collected by Renan at 08.00 to be taken to airport. La Paz airport is only small, although it does have flights to Miami and Santiago, as well as half a dozen local cities, including Sucre. The International and Domestic arrivals and departures and booking in are al in the one small building, and I think they only use a couple of the eight gates available. The flight only was scheduled to take forty-five minutes, so we wouldn’t be in the air very long.

Sucre was first the Incan capital of Bolivia, and then the Spanish capital in colonial times. Some people still consider it to be the most important city in the country today. The capital was only moved to La Paz after the successful fight for independence, when Simon Bolivar wanted to break with everything Spanish. The weather today was quite cloudy, but not with the fabulous cloud formations we have seen on other days during our flights. We were given a small square carrier bag – like you get a jewellery box in from Harrods or some other posh shop – that contained a weeny croissant with a tiny bit of cheese in the centre and a cake. As we all boarded the plane it was a bit like everyone leaving with a party bag. The flight was uneventful and we soon landed at Surcre airport. We had thought La Paz was small, but as we landed on a very small strip, the brakes squealing as the pilot tried to stop before the end of the runway, we didn’t spy any buildings at all. The plane turned round and retraced its path up the bumpy concrete landing strip and we could now see the control tower – not very tall. There was a small building underneath, painted blue and white, and this turned out to be where arrivals and departures took place. Another plane was parked a little way from ours, and people were disgorging from the building and criss-crossing with the people from our plane trying to get out of the airport. When we eventually reached the arrivals hall, it was absolutely packed with people still there from the other flight, and lots of people meeting both planes, shouting and waving and jumping up and down, all in an area about 5 metres square! Lucky we didn’t have to wait for any luggage, as that area, off to our right, was packed like sardines.

We couldn’t spot our courier, inside. We saw a few men with placards but they didn’t have our name on, so we made our way outside, and were immediately besieged by taxi drivers who wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. A young lady came running up to us as we continued to look lost and introduced herself as Karina, our guide for the next four days. She took us to meet the driver, Julio, and we set off for the short ride to Sucre city centre. Karina is late twenties, very attractive, with long legs and tight jeans (according to Colin). She was very enthusiastic about Sucre and keen to show us her city. As we needed to change some money to Bolivianos, the currency here, Karina suggested we should walk to the town and have a short tour on the way. So we literally just booked in at the hotel and dropped our bags in our room. The hotel is an ancient Spanish mansion, just a few blocks from the main square, with rooms on three floors around courtyards and terraces full of geraniums in bloom in terracotta pots. Our room has old style Spanish doors, with shutters over the windows, it is not large, but clean and has a large dark brown walk in wardrobe, and a modern bathroom – and a television (which we later found has almost all channels in Spanish – only CNN in English). But we hurried down to meet Karina again.

The sun was out now and it was very warm, but Karina told us the rains had started just last week - about two months late – so to enjoy it while we could. We wandered the streets, seeing lots of old colonial buildings with intricate balconies, in the narrow streets. All the buildings in town are painted white, by law, and consequently Sucre is nicknamed the “White City” of South America. Most of the city buildings date back to the time of Spanish rule, with tall wooden doors and windows, in very flat fronted buildings (except for the wooden or wrought iron balconies on the first floor). The streets were all very straight, in a grid all around the square, dominated once more by a huge white cathedral – the Spanish believed the bigger they built their churches the more impact they would have on the local people. There is a large park near the centre, containing two white arches representing the L’Arc de Triomph and a tall monument representing the Eiffel Tower. These were all built by a French Prince who came here and fell in love with a Spanish Princess, in the 17th century. He also built her a “chateau” style castle about ten kilometres out of tow – we would pass by this tomorrow.

We came to a street with lot of banks, and found the narrow pavements crowded with young people outside some of the buildings. Apparently they were trying to pay for their university courses, but places are limited and it obviously takes a long time to sort out who gets a place and therefore pays, and who does not. Karina took us to the National Bank of Bolivia, which strangely did not have any queues outside, We went in this huge edifice, all very silent and official looking, and were immediately accosted by a policeman with a gun – all public buildings in Bolivia seem to be patrolled by the police for security – hotels, banks, post offices, airline offices, etc. Karina spoke for us, and eventually persuaded the policeman to let us through to a side hall where we could change our travelers cheque. He, somewhat reluctantly let us, away from the cashiers. Karina showed us where to sit, and then left us to wait for the magic number of 56 to come up on the indicator board. We had arranged to meet her tomorrow for an extra trip to Potosi, a town in the Andes about 150 kms away.

About five minutes later a lady called us across to her desk (54 was still showing on the indicator board), and we showed her our travelers cheque and passport. She hummed and haa’ed for a few moments, before getting out some forms for me to fill in and took my passport to photocopy. She returned and between us we completed several more forms, which she then took to the back of the hall, and made a telephone call, spoke to another lady, came back and filled in more forms. Everything then went to a lady whose desk name seemed to say “Supervisor”. More humming and haa’ing before another form was produced. Back at her desk our lady asked for more signatures – there were about eight pieces of paper by now – before clipping them all together and taking me off to get a number to wait for the cashier in the front part of the bank. Luckily they weren’t busy and our new number was soon displayed, so Colin and I both went up to the desk. There was a lot of arm waving and Spanish gibberish coming from the other side of the counter, and we eventually realized that only one person was allowed at the cash desk. I thought the policeman was going to come and arrest Colin. This lady produced three more forms for me to sign, before handing back my passport together with the Bolivianos. The whole procedure had taken nearly half an hour – it’s a good job they are more speedy in London – or there would be a riot.

We decided to try and find a restaurant Karina had recommended for lunch – La Pousada. We walked up the street she had pointed out, and it was only by chance that we looked along a small alleyway, past doors leading to a small hotel, into an interesting looking courtyard with umbrellas and iron tables and chairs. On venturing closer we found we had successfully discovered the restaurant. No one spoke English and the menu was in Spanish – which we could understand a bit by now – and we hopefully ordered spaghetti bolognaise for Colin (is this becoming his fetish food?) and a tuna sandwich with fries for me, plus beers. The food and drinks came minus the chips – a large bowl of pasta for Colin, and a large tuna salad baguette for me. So I didn’t bother chasing the chips. We enjoyed our meal and feeling sated the waiter came to clear the table and brought another large plate, containing breaded chicken, chips and tomatoes! Apparently where I had pointed on the menu to “Papa’s Frittes”, or chips to you and me, it was under the “neopolitan” section! So we did our best to eat this, with some local lemonade.

Now we were really full, so decided to return to the hotel the long way – wandering down lots of streets, the white buildings reflecting the sun. We found the post office, where we bought extra stamps, before finally navigating our way back to the hotel – I am not sure how we did it – my sense of direction seemed to have deserted me.

Back in the hotel room, Colin realized my jacket was missing, together with the camera pouch, spare battery and memory card which were in the pocket! Panic – where did I last have it – it was either on the plane or in the car that brought us here. We took some time to locate the tour guide company address, but remembered seeing the airline office on our wanderings earlier. Out in the city again, we eventually found the tour agency, but the office was closed. So we made our way to the airline office. After waiting some time, we told a lady of our plight and she directed us to another man, who was with another customer. But when he went to fax, the lady told the man we were waiting – pointing at us continuously. Another younger man leapt up from his desk and came and asked us to describe my jacket, and said it had been found and was safely at the airport, including the camera equipment. We couldn’t collect it today as the airport only opened when there were planes due – just two a day! – one was ours and the other was the one loading as we arrived! It should open tomorrow about 08.30 – we had earlier arranged to meet Karina at 07.00 for our trip, and had no way of contacting her. We would have to sort it out tomorrow. But at least my jacket was safe.

We went back to the hotel, where Colin spent the rest of the afternoon downloading all the blogs, stills and videos to disk – it takes ages for the movie camera files, but it needed doing to free space on the computer – so I spent the time watching CNN, puzzling and reading – I’ve even started re-reading the book I finished a week ago, which is something I never do – shows how bored I was. When he had finished, we took another short walk around the city, to find some chocolate bars for breakfast tomorrow – breakfast doesn’t start until 07.30 and we will be leaving half an hour earlier.

We still were not hungry, so decided to skip dinner and just have some tea in the hotel! – I am still not drinking coffee, and have now changed to chamomile tea as it is readily available here! We had just returned to our room when Juz phoned. She had a houseful with some friend of ours, and wanted to let us know they had all safely arrived and were having a good time. It seemed strange to think of them all together and us on the other side of the world. But we will see them all at the end of April.