Getting to La Paz - 12 April 2008
Greetings from Bolivia... It took me 3 days to get to the park where I´m now working and the journey was pretty stressful from the start.
I woke up that morning and found that Orange (my mobile phone network) had barred all incoming and outgoing calls due to a misunderstanding. I badly needed my phone to be in working order as it was the only way that my contacts in La Paz would be able to get hold of me if there were any changes in plans. I wasted a lot of time and money to try and get this sorted, but in vain.
I was leaving for Miami from Heathrow Terminal 5 and it didn´t help either as only 10% of the phone boxes are connected (as the terminal has only just opened). So I couldn´t even call my parents to let them know that this was the problem, should they have tried to contact me too... (and I tend to worry about my mother fretting as she would not have understood the msg in English that explained why I could not pick up .. and my sister was in Madrid all week end so I couldn´t call her either... not even from a call box).
After all this stress, the BA flight was actually quite as stress free experience. I managed to get aisle seats at the last minute as I was sitting in between a couple who wanted to sit together. So that worked out just fine (I had tried to reserve an aisle seat on line the day before, but the BA system had crashed so I could not print my boarding pass) and of course, by the time I got to the airport, all the aisle seats were gone.
The movies were great too, and I watched 3 in a row (I´d give ´PS I love you´top marks -- just my kind of movie, totally loved it, cried a lot... ) and so the 8h45 mins flight didn´t seem that long after all. Food was good too. No problem for once.
The 5 hour wait in Miami was more painful... 3 flights landed within 30 mins of each other, and on mine we were 360 passengers, so if you do the maths, that´s roughly 1,000 people to go through Customs. Good job I had 5 hours to kill... by then I was getting quite tired though as it was 2am in my head. I found Miami airport very confusing and far too cold to even try and sleep on some seats (besides, you could not lift the handle on the seats so you were truly stuck to have a decent rest). T5 was much more comfy in that respect...
Then I eventually got onto my flight for La Paz and had managed to secure, miraculously, 3 seats to myself (I was the only one who had -- I really felt God had answered my prayers) when 10 seconds before take off this girl comes from 3 rows behind and barges in and says ´I´ll have to sit by your window, I´m seated next to a guy who has bad breath of smoke and alcohol, I can´t bear it´. I said ´Do you have to sit HERE ?? I mean, there are another 50 empty seats on this plane, at least, I have been on the go for over 20 hours with NO sleep, I really need to catch up, please go elsewhere´. She completely ignored my plea with a ´No, yours look best, that will do me fine. You don´t have to worry about me, you can use the seat in the middle´. ´My spine won´t stretch that far, I cannot crouch over 2 seats comfortably´ I grumbled back. She still couldn´t care less. .. I turned to an air hostess in desperation ´I really need to catch up on my sleep, can´t YOU do something?´, and she said ´Well, you have not paid for the other 2 seats either so she can do what she likes´... I was fuming. This girl was up all night reading magazines, she truly could have sat anywhere. I was so annoyed and SO acutely frustrated that I was unable to sleep more than 30 mins out of 6H... grrrr....
When we landed in La Paz, it was a beautiful crisp morning which helped me keep awake (by then I had not slept most of the past 26 hours). There was not the snow predicted by the BBC weather forecast but there were snow capped mountains all around... though the city looked rather plain, with mainly small red brick houses with flat roofs and a few churches standing out here and there...
My flight was 1H late landing and then my luggage was the last one to arrive on the conveyor belt (I still felt happier to have waited 45 minutes when some people lately have had to wait more like 2 weeks !). By the time I came out, my poor driver had been waiting for me for 2 hours, as of 5:35am, pretty painful... His name was Hugo and he was the father of my contact, Miriam. He was a charming man, who didn´t speak any English beside ´Hello´ so I had to get going with my Spanish -- and I felt seriously rusty. But we got by...
My apartment was very spacious. I even had a huge kitchen all to myself that I barely used. I noticed there was no central heating though and that the bathroom needed a serious clean. However, Miriam (who lived in the flat below) soon sorted me out. She brought me a heater that blows hot air, cleaned up the bath tub within 10 minutes and I was able to have a nice hot shower (very hot too) and catch up on my sleep for 4 hours. I didn´t want to sleep too much as I feared I may not go back to sleep on time that night.
Then we went for a stroll around the capital city (the highest capital city in the world) and it was pretty much exactly as I´d remembered it... San Francisco church still standing, the countless stalls all over the streets, most of the older women had their black bowler hats and skirts to knee high, with babies wrapped in a colourful shawl on their backs. I picked up some great bargains. Such as trekking socks that cost me 20 dollars equivalent in the UK were only 2 dollars equivalent here... and I bought 2lbs of fresh Bazilian nuts... absolutely delicious. Far better than what you buy in the shops in Europe when they are all dry by then.
I did suffer a bit from altitude sickness and certainly felt it every time we walked up a few flights of stairs. My heart would really pounce in my chest. To help relieve the symptoms Hugo gave me some cola leaves to soak in hot water and drink up regularly. I also went to the chemist to relieve the nauseous symptoms and they sold me a couple of pills (here you can only buy 2 pills out of a pack of 56 if need be - great !!!) and I took one and within 15 minutes I felt instantly better. I was well impressed.
Miriam and I then went to an English pub for an early dinner... I know how it sounds... but she wasn´t sure she could get me decent vegetarian food in a Bolivian restaurant. It was good but people in there smoked and I really am not used to that anymore so as soon as we got home I had to wash my hair and put some of my clothes away in a plastic bag.
My Spanish is still rusty, I really should have revised my past tenses a few weeks before coming over, but you know how utterly frantic my life is... I just never found the time... I guess the only ´dead´time I have is at the bus stop waiting, or in my bath... but sometimes it´s good to do NOTHING... I never seem to do ´nothing´anymore.
La Paz was actually a LOT warmer than I expected by day. When I landed it was 7am and so it was still quite chilly, maybe 5C or so, but in the afternoon, it must have been 15C and so I was seriously over dressed. I kept stripping as we went along... and I got tanned really quickly too on my face. S15 is just not enough when you are that high up, S50 would have been more appropriate.
I had taken 300 dollars with me, but was told that Bolivians no longer ´widely accept dollars´ as the currency is devaluating too fast. So I basically had to get BS from an ATM... thank God for those. I just wish I didn´t have all these dollars with me now as I dare not leave them anywhere ... so I keep them in my money belt at all times. Not great either.
Greetings from Bolivia... It took me 3 days to get to the park where I´m now working and the journey was pretty stressful from the start.
I woke up that morning and found that Orange (my mobile phone network) had barred all incoming and outgoing calls due to a misunderstanding. I badly needed my phone to be in working order as it was the only way that my contacts in La Paz would be able to get hold of me if there were any changes in plans. I wasted a lot of time and money to try and get this sorted, but in vain.
I was leaving for Miami from Heathrow Terminal 5 and it didn´t help either as only 10% of the phone boxes are connected (as the terminal has only just opened). So I couldn´t even call my parents to let them know that this was the problem, should they have tried to contact me too... (and I tend to worry about my mother fretting as she would not have understood the msg in English that explained why I could not pick up .. and my sister was in Madrid all week end so I couldn´t call her either... not even from a call box).
After all this stress, the BA flight was actually quite as stress free experience. I managed to get aisle seats at the last minute as I was sitting in between a couple who wanted to sit together. So that worked out just fine (I had tried to reserve an aisle seat on line the day before, but the BA system had crashed so I could not print my boarding pass) and of course, by the time I got to the airport, all the aisle seats were gone.
The movies were great too, and I watched 3 in a row (I´d give ´PS I love you´top marks -- just my kind of movie, totally loved it, cried a lot... ) and so the 8h45 mins flight didn´t seem that long after all. Food was good too. No problem for once.
The 5 hour wait in Miami was more painful... 3 flights landed within 30 mins of each other, and on mine we were 360 passengers, so if you do the maths, that´s roughly 1,000 people to go through Customs. Good job I had 5 hours to kill... by then I was getting quite tired though as it was 2am in my head. I found Miami airport very confusing and far too cold to even try and sleep on some seats (besides, you could not lift the handle on the seats so you were truly stuck to have a decent rest). T5 was much more comfy in that respect...
Then I eventually got onto my flight for La Paz and had managed to secure, miraculously, 3 seats to myself (I was the only one who had -- I really felt God had answered my prayers) when 10 seconds before take off this girl comes from 3 rows behind and barges in and says ´I´ll have to sit by your window, I´m seated next to a guy who has bad breath of smoke and alcohol, I can´t bear it´. I said ´Do you have to sit HERE ?? I mean, there are another 50 empty seats on this plane, at least, I have been on the go for over 20 hours with NO sleep, I really need to catch up, please go elsewhere´. She completely ignored my plea with a ´No, yours look best, that will do me fine. You don´t have to worry about me, you can use the seat in the middle´. ´My spine won´t stretch that far, I cannot crouch over 2 seats comfortably´ I grumbled back. She still couldn´t care less. .. I turned to an air hostess in desperation ´I really need to catch up on my sleep, can´t YOU do something?´, and she said ´Well, you have not paid for the other 2 seats either so she can do what she likes´... I was fuming. This girl was up all night reading magazines, she truly could have sat anywhere. I was so annoyed and SO acutely frustrated that I was unable to sleep more than 30 mins out of 6H... grrrr....
When we landed in La Paz, it was a beautiful crisp morning which helped me keep awake (by then I had not slept most of the past 26 hours). There was not the snow predicted by the BBC weather forecast but there were snow capped mountains all around... though the city looked rather plain, with mainly small red brick houses with flat roofs and a few churches standing out here and there...
My flight was 1H late landing and then my luggage was the last one to arrive on the conveyor belt (I still felt happier to have waited 45 minutes when some people lately have had to wait more like 2 weeks !). By the time I came out, my poor driver had been waiting for me for 2 hours, as of 5:35am, pretty painful... His name was Hugo and he was the father of my contact, Miriam. He was a charming man, who didn´t speak any English beside ´Hello´ so I had to get going with my Spanish -- and I felt seriously rusty. But we got by...
My apartment was very spacious. I even had a huge kitchen all to myself that I barely used. I noticed there was no central heating though and that the bathroom needed a serious clean. However, Miriam (who lived in the flat below) soon sorted me out. She brought me a heater that blows hot air, cleaned up the bath tub within 10 minutes and I was able to have a nice hot shower (very hot too) and catch up on my sleep for 4 hours. I didn´t want to sleep too much as I feared I may not go back to sleep on time that night.
Then we went for a stroll around the capital city (the highest capital city in the world) and it was pretty much exactly as I´d remembered it... San Francisco church still standing, the countless stalls all over the streets, most of the older women had their black bowler hats and skirts to knee high, with babies wrapped in a colourful shawl on their backs. I picked up some great bargains. Such as trekking socks that cost me 20 dollars equivalent in the UK were only 2 dollars equivalent here... and I bought 2lbs of fresh Bazilian nuts... absolutely delicious. Far better than what you buy in the shops in Europe when they are all dry by then.
I did suffer a bit from altitude sickness and certainly felt it every time we walked up a few flights of stairs. My heart would really pounce in my chest. To help relieve the symptoms Hugo gave me some cola leaves to soak in hot water and drink up regularly. I also went to the chemist to relieve the nauseous symptoms and they sold me a couple of pills (here you can only buy 2 pills out of a pack of 56 if need be - great !!!) and I took one and within 15 minutes I felt instantly better. I was well impressed.
Miriam and I then went to an English pub for an early dinner... I know how it sounds... but she wasn´t sure she could get me decent vegetarian food in a Bolivian restaurant. It was good but people in there smoked and I really am not used to that anymore so as soon as we got home I had to wash my hair and put some of my clothes away in a plastic bag.
My Spanish is still rusty, I really should have revised my past tenses a few weeks before coming over, but you know how utterly frantic my life is... I just never found the time... I guess the only ´dead´time I have is at the bus stop waiting, or in my bath... but sometimes it´s good to do NOTHING... I never seem to do ´nothing´anymore.
La Paz was actually a LOT warmer than I expected by day. When I landed it was 7am and so it was still quite chilly, maybe 5C or so, but in the afternoon, it must have been 15C and so I was seriously over dressed. I kept stripping as we went along... and I got tanned really quickly too on my face. S15 is just not enough when you are that high up, S50 would have been more appropriate.
I had taken 300 dollars with me, but was told that Bolivians no longer ´widely accept dollars´ as the currency is devaluating too fast. So I basically had to get BS from an ATM... thank God for those. I just wish I didn´t have all these dollars with me now as I dare not leave them anywhere ... so I keep them in my money belt at all times. Not great either.
posted by Sylvie at 10:06 PM
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