Phew... the longest journey I've ever made... 57 hours on this bus, leaving Cochabamba in Bolivia at 8am Wednesday 27th and arriving here into Buenos Aires about 5pm this evening, Good Friday 29th March!
Plenty of time, then, in transit to reflect on the swift three nights, two-and-a-half days in Bolivia.
Of the two points I'd heard about Bolivia before arriving, the first was certainly true, the food was incredibly cheap! It's also damn tasty.
Vendors sell food of all sorts throughout the streets for just a few pence to a quid, from trolleys, baskets, tubs, coolers, big metal urns, often seated on the floor, or on park benches, or from stalls with benches for us customers to sit. The proliferation of street vendors and the variety of the foods they sell intrigues and excites me here, as much as I remember it did in Guatemala in 2010, and in just 2&1/2 days I’ve enjoyed: a lunch of fish rice and salad served in a wooden bowl on a park bench (10 bolivianos/ £1); chips and salad eaten late one night on plastic stools at a street corner (5b / 50p) ; cheese-stuffed empanadas sold from shops, baskets trolleys (2-6b/20 - 60p), delicious orange juice freshly squeezed in front of you, drunk by the vendor’s trolley in the park (3b/30p)
The morning of embarking on this cray-long bus ride this was my breakfast of hot fruit & milk drink and deep fried cheesy puff-pasty, eaten on cloth covered benches in the streets of La Cancha, Cochabamba's huge market. I'd met young lad Osvaldo at the (broken) cashpoint in the bus terminal and he offered to accompany my on my blanket hunt in the market (on my last overnight bus ride I learned the hard way that not all bus companies offer blankets with the service and so reckoned this was a wise choice). So as we looked for a cheap blanket Oswaldo chatted away, he is from La Paz visiting Cochabmaba for a holiday, and working in the mountains, where he's recently been bitten, so was walking with a plaster on his arm.
This experience and a few other random encounters with chatty Bolivians belied the second point that I'd heard about Bolivia that the people are very shy to talk. Perhaps in some circumstances it takes a little longer for folk to open up but in just this couple of days I met some very open Bolivians, and all of them told tales of travels far afield (apart from the sweet lad in the 1st hostel who said he had never left Cochabamba because he was afraid to arrive somewhere and not know where he was.)
One young taxi driver, Boris, told me about how he and a group of friends had lived and worked in Paris for a few years, but he had ultimately come back to Bolivia because he's been dreaming of his homeland.
Another taxi driver told me about the 4 day car trip he and his family had taken through to Brazil, traveling only by night apparently because there is a risk of being car-jacked in Brazil because of driving a car with Bolivian number-plates.
So we left from the fascinating hubbub of Cochabamba bus station early Wednesday morning, and along the 57 hour route had many stops, where we would eat, go to the toilet, change money when we were at the border, all under strict instructions from one of the two shift-drivers. His introduction to the journey was more than firm - we were told under no circumstances to use the toilet for any activity other than urinating, though that rule became redundant when we were banned from using the toilet at all after about 10 hours. Not entirely sure why, there were no obvious signs of it being broken, but it meant that from then on at every stop we were like a bunch of school kids, being told when to get down from the bus and queue up at public toilets!
The other instruction from our driver was to vigilate amongst ourselves against drugs. From this point on, and with the number of stop-and-search stops the bus made, I realised just how common drug trafficking by bus must be from Boliva. Indeed at the first check Yola, a beautiful old Bolivian weaver and the first bus-friend I made, explained that the last time she made this journey a Peruvian lady had been found with a packet of cocaine in her backpack. Apparently she was fined and sent home, but not imprisoned. And the driver had told us of two days lost at the border crossing when a packet was found in the bus toilet on a previous journey.
Luckily our trip was uneventful in this respect. At one particular stop after the Argentinian border we were each individually taken into a private back room to be searched. I was patted down by a uniformed lady with an aggressive manner who said that my surname sounded strange, and asked if I was traveling with the German girls, presumably because we were the only Europeans on the bus.
This drug-vigilance aspect of the journey certainly confirmed what Guillermo had spoken of and what I had a already read a little of, that the coca-cocaine issue is pertinent. The coca leaf is a natural plant and has been traditionally used within Andean culture for centuries. The bitter leaves are chewed to promote alertness and combat the effects of high altitude, reducing tiredness, hunger, sensitivity to cold and digestive issues. The raw coca leaf is neither harmful nor addictive and its high levels of calcium, iron at vitamins mean it has medicinal properties and is therefore also drunk as a tea. You can see the list of healthy benefits below on the bag of powdered coca that Lucy gave me.
Powdered coca leaf, Made in Sacaba
Preparation: half a spoon in a glass of warm water, drink before breakfast.
*Its high calcium content of more than 2000mg combats osteoporosis. 100% healthy
*Almost immediately relieves arthritic pains and/or muscular pains, combats diabetes. Natural Leaf.
*Visibly increases physical stamina
*Combats serious problems of malnutrition and/or assimilation. Triggers the cleaning of the urinary tract.
The issue with coca is therefore not the natural leaf itselft, but rather its derivative, cocaine. And as Guillermo said, to become cocaine, coca has to pass through many 'blackmarket hands' and many processes. Since cocaine became popular in the USA and Europe the demand for coca leaves has increased massively, resulting in laws being written in Bolivia to limit coca growth. A1988 law permits 12,000 hectares of coca to be cultivated for legal use, but estimates of the actual production levels are much higher.
It seems absurd and typically aggressive that rather than address the cocaine issue on home turf the USA reacted by sending DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) officers to Bolivian coca-growing regions Chapare and Beni to eradicate the crop. Appanrently the USA also put a lot of money into 'alternative' crops that in reality failed and led to increased poverty. And besides, what appaling arrogance and disrespect of the ancient culture, and what a clear example of projection of blame. Reports of brutality and human rights abuses inflicted on the 'cocaleros' by the DEA testify to the shocking levels of USA aggression.
Coca is not cocaine!! F*ck it!
This coca-cocaine issue was pivotal in bringing current president Evo Morales into government. Morales had been a cocalero (coca grower) in Chapare and became active in local unions, leading the resistance against the eradication policies. His government set the popular slogan 'coca si, cocaine no' (coca yes, cocaine no) that you get on t-shirts and that I saw a hand written derivative of on the Plaza 14 noticeboard. Morales has just achieved his aim of removing the coca leaf from the 1961 convention, meaning its chewing is now technically legal again. According to an article in Bolivian newspaper 'la época' it also happens that this month, March, is the annual month of the 'carnival' of the anti-drug politics, in Bolivia, South America and globally. The difference this year being that Bolivia is at the forefront of changes in the paradigm of the anti-drug war.
The 'Vienna Consensus' collapses
The international system of drug control is being eroded on all sides. Various Latin American countries, starting with change in in the strength of their relationships, are questioning the USA paradigm that concentrates control on the supply, that militarises territory, encourages indiscriminate prohibition and criminalises the chewing of coca, and more. Bolivia has already achieved the triumph of denouncing the 1961 convention with the support of 169 states.
So we reached the Bolivian/ Argentinian border at Salvador Mazza the morning of the 28th and ended up being stuck there for the major part of the day. It wasn't really clear why - we'd all had our passports stamped out of Bolivia at the Bolivian window and then just waited and waited and waited in the stiffling heat of the bus. A relief when we finally got moving again.
Over the course of the three days it was fascinating to watch the changes in the landscapes from the windows. In Bolivia we passed by rough adobe shacks and many stalls piled high with multicoloured stacks of fruit, through mountainous regions covered in lush greenery and wide gushing rivers, a dramatic contrast to the vast desert and dried-out river basins of northern Chile. Moving into flatter land towards the border temperatures rose and as we moved into Argentina we passed green and yellow fields, adobe ranch buildings, horses and more rivers. Approaching Buenos Aires the buildings became larger, more expensive and industrial, many with walls of reflective glass, billboards appeared and multiplied and traffic got heavier.
Eventually we pulled into Buenos Aires bus station, where the majority of our bus crew, me included, spent a good long time hanging out by the 'centro de llamadas' (a series of phone booths where you enter, make as many calls as you like and pay on leaving). I tried to get a hold of my friend from the residency, Daniela, but when she didn't answer called around hostel after hostel. Five were completely full, one closed for Semana Santa (Easter Holy week) and I'd started to feel slightly nervous about the prospect of finding anywhere to stay. Luckily in a second round of calls I found a bed in the dormitory of hostel Casa Esmerelda, who gave me directions to get there. A local bus ride and taxi drop-off later and I have a bed again!
Big love from Argentina!
:-)
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