More Bolivian Misery

When we got back to the hostel after surviving the Road of Death, we thought we should get into the party spirit of the hostel and had a few drinks. One thing this party hostel does which actually makes it much easier to sleep than most party hostels, is it organises taxis to whisk people away to different clubs every night, by about midnight. So we decided to go to that night's club when the taxis turned up. The club was completely empty until we arrived there. It was awful, so we just accepted our free drinks and then headed out to look for somewhere more interesting. We did find a more interesting club, which meant that we only left it when it was light, a situation we took advantage of by picking up our Death Road t-shirts and CDs. There were traffic zebras everywhere.

Traffic zebra

Two traffic zebras

Predictably, we spent most of that day sleeping and feeling terrible. Eventually we got up for food and I had a burger in the bar. That was that day.

The next day was Friday and Lucy and Zdenek were arriving. They had decided to give our hostel a miss and instead book into the Adventure Brew Hostel which has its own microbrewery. We went looking for them, hopefully to join them for a beer, but they weren't answering text messages when we arrived there and I was starting to feel really ill again; I could barely drink the beer from the microbrewery. By the time we gave up waiting for them and left, I was convinced that I had food poisoning again. I suspected the burger. This partly ruined our plans for the night because I was too ill to eat anything, let alone the hottest vindaloo in South America (maybe the world) and when they woke up again we discovered that Zdenek hates curry anyway, so he wasn't interested. Oh well, at least I had my Death Road t-shirt.

That night we went out again, this time with Lucy, Zdenek, and Ricarda, but even on Friday night we struggled to find lively places and spent a fortune going from place to place in taxis. Eventually someone told us about an after-hours club so we took a taxi to there. I was in the front seat and everyone else got out so it fell to me to pay the driver, however I had nothing smaller than a Bs100 note which people are always sticky about changing. Before I handed to him I asked him if he had change and he said yes. Then he took a pile of small coins out and said no and could I ask my friends, so I turned to ask the others and Ricarda handed me a Bs20. When the taxi driver handed me back my Bs100 note something almost registered, but didn't quite make it though the drunken fog. It was only after I got out that I realised the note he handed me back felt completely different from the one I had handed him. I looked down and it was pretty sure it was an obvious fake. The bastard had realised I was drunk enough (only just actually) and switched it on me after directing my attention away from him.

Robbed again! Why did nobody warn us about Bolivia? At the door I tried to use the Bs100 note but my suspicions were confirmed that it was an obvious fake, but the people on the door were nice enough to apologise for the taxi driver when I cursed him. It actually seemed like a really good place, but it was packed with nowhere to sit and we were all a bit tired by that point. And I was completely fed up, as well as still feeling ill. At that point I was completely sick of Bolivia. Poisoned twice and robbed twice. What a place. Just before we left, I spotted Chello, our guide from the Road of Death, wearing his “I survived the Road of Death” t-shirt. He came over and hugged as both before heading on towards the bar. I think it was a proper cool underground club we had stumbled on; if only we had found it before so many of the other rubbish places that we'd nearly had enough. I didn't care: I just wanted to go to bed and dream of murdering taxi drivers, who seem to be almost consistently the most evil people in any country. OK, you do get nice ones, but most taxi drivers seem evil in every country.

written by

The Happy Couple on October 30, 2009 from La Paz, Bolivia

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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