Craziness in La Paz

When we arrived in La Paz, Bolivia, I took one look outside and seriously considered just not getting off of the bus. We had stopped at the side of the most chaotic traffic circle, with buses, cars, taxis, and people all trying to weave their way through the mess. It was late at night and dark outside, but there were still many people on the streets. I would have been nervous about getting off a bus in any such busy and disorderly place at night, and knowing that La Paz is notorious for scam artists, I was especially nervous. But being as I really didn’t have any other option, I got off the bus, and we jumped immediately into a taxi.

We had heard from tourists we had met along our way that La Paz is notorious for scam artists. We had learned of a few of the more popular scams – men posing as police officers to lure tourists into their vehicles, who then drive them outside of the city to rob them; the ketchup or mustard scam, which involves “accidentally” spraying ketchup or mustard on a tourist’s backpack as he walks by, and then offering to help clean it off, and robbing him in the ensuing confusion – and we knew what to do if we found ourselves in one of those situations. But this did little to ease my mind about being in a city that seemed so uncontrolled and chaotic. From the minute I arrived in La Paz, my focus was on getting out of the city as soon as possible.

We spent most of Sunday at the travel agency planning our itinerary for the upcoming few weeks. That morning, we had taken our clothes to a laundromat, and when we returned to pick it up after leaving the travel agency, our clothes were scattered in many different piles of clothes all over the place, there were several other people waiting to pick up their clothes which were also scattered, and there was only one teenage girl working there to organize it all. We waited for a while until we were relatively certain we had collected all of our clothes, then, as it was too dangerous to be out after dark, we headed back towards our hotel. By this time, the streets were terribly noisy and crowded again. We decided to take a taxi to get out of the commotion. But the traffic was so bad that it took longer to get there in the taxi than it would have been if we had just walked. That night, there were drunks brawling in the street and people digging through the trash bins across from our hotel.

We went on a bike tour outside of the city on Monday, and Vince was dropped off in Coroico at the end of the day to continue on to a jungle trip in Rurrenabaque. So on Tuesday I was in La Paz alone, and didn’t leave my hotel except to go to the travel agency to buy a bus ticket out of town that evening.

In Bolivia, the travel agencies sell “certificates of service”, which are printed receipts that you paid for a service, and are exchanged for actual tickets by the service provider when you arrive. But when I arrived at the bus station with my certificate of service, the bus company had no record of my reservation and the tickets were sold out. After I told them I had paid 90 Bolivianos (about $11.25 – abbreviated Bs.) for a first-class ticket, they called the travel agency for me, and the woman who had sold me the certificate showed up at the bus station within minutes. She was very apologetic, so I knew it was an honest mistake, and she went running around the station to all of the other bus companies to try to find a place for me on another bus. She returned a few minutes later and told me to follow her. She led me to a bus where a bus boy took my backpack and loaded it, and she handed me back 20 Bs. (about $2.50) which I assumed was my refund for not being on a first-class bus, and I climbed on-board.

But once on the bus, I saw that there were no seats left. I asked the bus boy, who had been talking to my travel agent, about this, and he led me to the back of the bus and pointed to the filthy aisle floor, where three men were already sitting packed together on a blanket. I was so stunned, I just started laughing! There was no way I was going to sit on the aisle floor of this filthy bus for 10 hours in the middle of the night over the terrible, unpaved roads of Bolivia! I shook my head and turned back down the aisle, and before getting off of the bus I commented to the driver about how I had paid 90 Bs. for a first-class bus ticket and this was what I got! When the driver heard me say 90 Bs. he stopped me and told me to wait a minute to see if he could work something out. This did not surprise me. Bus drivers pocket the money for additional, illegal passengers on their buses (those without seats), and 90 Bs. was a lot of money to him. (I wasn’t about to mention the 20 Bs. that the travel agent had returned to me as it might have resulted in my not getting a seat on the bus.) And sure enough, somehow the bus driver managed to find a seat for me!

Before I tried to get some sleep on this terribly uncomfortable bus ride, I confirmed with the passengers sitting near me that they had all paid between 30-35 Bs. for their seats. I was a little annoyed that I had paid double, but was used to being overcharged, and at least I was on my way out of La Paz.

But then, the next morning, I was woken up by the bus boy who told me I had only paid 70, not 90 Bs., and he asked me for another 20 Bs. I couldn’t believe it! And being as we were already at our destination town of Potosi, there was no way I was going to give him the money! Instead, I started off on a lecture, in pathetic Spanish, about white people being overcharged for services in South America. I told the bus boy I had paid double what everyone else had paid. And he wanted more money from me? It was just because I was white!

I don’t know what got into me. All this over $2.50. It had been a long, miserable, sleepless night. And I guess I had just had it with being overcharged. It is much worse for women. In Lima, Peru, a man tried to charge me 15 soles for a taxi ride that was typically 3. They would try to overcharge Vince, but only by a few soles. For me, he multiplied the price by 5!

Anyway, a business man sitting in the seat behind me was so persuaded by my speech of the unjust treatment of tourists (or maybe he just felt sorry for me) that he told the bus boy to leave me alone. And by this time, we were at the bus station in Potosi, so I thanked the man, got my backpack, and left.

And to top off my bad experiences in La Paz – I had gotten a Burger King hamburger for dinner before getting on the bus, and shortly after I arrived in Potosi, I was afflicted with the worst sickness from it that I have had yet on this trip. I was miserable, unable to eat, and stuck in bed for two days.

Vince spent one more day in La Paz after returning from his jungle trip. When he was walking down the street that day, a man knocked him as he ran by and “accidentally” dropped a wad of cash on the ground. Another man picked it up and started walking with Vince, told him how the man had dropped it, showed him the big wad of bills, and asked Vince what they should do. Vince wasn’t sure where all of this was headed, but he was sure somehow it was a scam. So he told the man walking with him that it was his lucky day, and walked away.

When Vince met me the next day in Uyuni, he was sick from something he had eaten in La Paz.