Away From It All In South America

Bolivia's Not For The Ordinary Traveler

February 05, 1995|By Alan Solomon, Tribune Staff Writer.

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Sundance Kid: "What's your next idea?"

Butch Cassidy: "Bolivia."

Sundance: "What's Bolivia?"

Butch: "Bolivia? That's a country, stupid."

Sundance: "Why don't we just go to Mexico instead?"

Butch: "All they got in Mexico is sweat . . ."

And what do they got in Bolivia?

Food, some of it supposedly life-threatening. Running water guaranteed to make you run. Malaria. At least one river that flows bright yellow. Air, in La Paz, that's so thin it's barely breathable . . . which, since it's thick with fumes and dust and other suspicious matter, may be just as well.

Beaches? Try Chile. Roads? Not for the faint of heart or weak of bladder.

OK, Bolivia isn't the world's worst tourist destination. The Balkans are lower on the list right now, and parts of New Jersey are kind of unpleasant.

Besides, this country does have its charms.

Ruins that predate the Incas. Lake Titicaca, not only the world's highest navigable lake but one of the truly wonderful names in all geography. Negligible crime. Andes. Jungles. Llamas. Stable currency. Good, cheap beer. Cheap everything, really. And nice people, many of whom wear native costumes that make sensational snapshots.

But for ordinary tourists, particularly those who don't understand Spanish, it's not an easy place to deal with. On the other hand, tourists who like challenges will find just what they're looking for in this country south of Peru, west of Brazil, north of Chile and years away from being ready for Prime Time Tourism.

Mostly, what they will find is discomfort. Which is one reason Norteamericanos, aside from those on official crop-adjustment duty, haven't exactly been storming the place. Another reason?

"The coca," said a travel agent in the central-Bolivian town of Cochabamba. Coca leaves are the raw material for cocaine, easily Bolivia's biggest export commodity (estimates put it at 60 percent of the total), and some folks tend to view that as a negative.

And how about Bolivia's reputation for monthly coups and general instability? Shouldn't be a factor, she said.

"It's the same thing all over South America, no?"

Some things, on the other hand, are unique to Bolivia.

Take La Paz.

There are two capitals of the country, and La Paz is one of them. (Sucre, unvisited for this story but by all reports a colonial gem, is the official capital city, though the government sits in La Paz. Hey, it's their country.)

La Paz is, at 13,000 feet, the globe's highest (no drug joke) capital, a fact of which it is very proud. That the altitude leaves visitors headachy, short of breath and generally non-functional for 24 hours or more after arrival somehow doesn't dilute this pride.

The altitude-sickness phenomenon is called soroche. There are as many supposed quick-cures for soroche as there are for jet-lag-including the legal mate de coca, tea made from those nasty coca leaves, which tastes like tea made from spinach leaves and provides the same level of buzz. Like jet-lag cures, none works for everybody and most don't work for anybody. A day or two of rest does it-and then it's probably time to leave La Paz anyway, which is the happiest cure of all.

Aside from leaving, arrival is the highlight of La Paz.

From a window seat in a comfortable airliner cabin, the approach to the city-tucked as it is within a fold of the Andes-is legitimately, if not yet literally, breathtaking. From that height, sparkling white office buildings, hotels and shops line the base of the fold, and from them well-kept residential districts ramble up the valley walls.

At night, lights from the houses and street lamps make those valley walls twinkle.

Looming Fujilike over all this, 21,000 feet above sea level, is snowcapped Mt. Illimani. In sum, a wonderful beginning.

And kind of a lie. A second, closer look at that view, from the airport taxi, follows the valley rim and El Alto (a wretched, stinking suburb teeming with refugees from the countryside) along a thoroughly polluted creek and some decidedly unpicturesque housing, and down to your hotel. That hotel certainly will be somewhere near the bottom of the fold, along a main drag with multiple names and personalities (including chic-there are some snazzy parts) known collectively as El Prado.

Hotels? Plenty of them, quite clean, almost all with private bath, too-soft mattresses and too-low prices: Pay more than $50/double with breakfast and-unless you really can't live without CNN-you're throwing bolivianos away. Good hotel rooms average about $35; truly basic but tolerable rooms can be had for $12.

At any price in La Paz, you'll shower with your mouth closed; not even a couple we met from Mexico City trusted Bolivian tap water. High-end hotels supply bottled water, but it's sold everywhere, including street markets.