JOEL GRIFFETT

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My refusal to catch a local bus will get me killed a some point, but I made my excuses as I hiked from one side of Potosi to the new terminal on the other carrying everything I own on my front and back once more. The bus cost literal pennies but considering I already don’t fit in any of these glorified minivans I decided against carrying my bags on there too. Or at least, that was my justification as I innocently walked through increasingly dodgy neighbourhoods. Luckily no one gave a shit; in Chile people used to stare at me all the time but in Bolivia, where I stand out even more, no one pays me any attention and for that I am grateful.

The bus to Sucre stopped again, interminably. For the poor man sat opposite me who was just trying to sleep this became a nightmare. The hefty maid sat behind me decided to lean over him and negotiate a purchase – the longest purchase in history for everyone involved. Normally these purchases are short and sharp but she clearly took pleasure in resting her fat stomach on this man who, no matter how hard he tried, couldn’t escape. He turned until he was facing the window and by this point his face was pressed up against the glass and he was close to suffocation. But if he’d turned any further he would have done a 360 and be face first in flab. He was caught between a rock (una gorda) and a hard place. I wondered why she just didn’t get off the bus. I realised why when we arrived in Sucre and watched her have immense trouble with the three steps down off the bus – if she’d done that at the side of the road she’d still be there. All I can say is that I’m glad it wasn’t me…I would have lost my temper and said something offensive (again).

Sucre eventually approached in the distance. Like any other city, it was a sad and sprawling expanse of red bricks and mortar, a multi-level expanse of sadness thanks to all the hills that surrounded it. I wasn’t expecting much, but I was immensely surprised by the city. It became one of my favourite places so far, not just because of some of the things I witnessed in the hostel.

The Irony Impaired American

Coca is a miracle. Not a drug, but a gift from god that makes altitude and even life itself more bearable in the harsh expanses of the Andes mountains. Stewed or stuff into a wad in the cheek and slowly chewed, even at the relatively low altitude of Sucre it was available in the ubiquitous translucent green bags and I took immense satisfaction at the American in my hostel who didn’t know how to use it.
Almost 24/7 he was doing some kind of work and for over a week I watched him eat the leaves like crisps. Presumably it creates some kind of coca-like effect otherwise he wouldn’t persist and I didn’t want to tell him he was an idiot, even when I overheard some of his conversations in the kitchen. Judging how much he wrote in a notebook and how much he talked about drugs, I think he was living out his best Hunter S Thompson fantasy and that I understand – every degenerate writer has episodes of this – but he went about his business with an air of such excruciating importance that I couldn’t take him seriously. He seemed loath to speak to anyone but his fellow north Americans and when I heard him telling a woman in the kitchen how the sound of motorbikes echoing through the narrow streets outside infringed on his human rights and made his life incomprehensibly difficult I nearly lost it and poured the kettle over his big daft face. If this was irony, it might have been a little bit amusing, but this American was incapable of such function.

Monkey smugglers in the Amazon

“Before it was the gringos, but now it’s the Chinese,” lamented Bernardo, the guide in the museum.
I did my best impression of Donald Trump but no one laughed. The American in the group definitely didn’t; he had that morose look of ‘my cat just killed itself to get away from me’ and I don’t think humour was one of the things programmed into his robot brain. The Chinese influence in South American mining was ever-increasing. In Chile, Sergio had told me of the mines around Antofagasta falling into Chinese ownership but no one quite knew how. These mines were meant to be nationalised but shady deals and dirty money changes hands too easily in the modern world. Once British and American companies, now Chinese. At least we never pumped mercury into rivers (that I know of).

The Israeli, Isaac, conferred. He said while he was in the jungle in Peru he heard of illegal mining operations all over the place. Riverboats dredging rivers for gold and dumping mercury into the water which in turn poisoned local populations who fished or swam in the river. The same was happening in Bolivia too, in the national parks of La Paz province.

Before he left us for his lunch (Bolivians seem to be overcome by thoughts of lunch from about 10:30am onwards) he dangled an outrageously vague and but incredibly intriguing morsel of info in front of me. A man involved in this illegal mining trade went on ‘holiday’ to China and at some point along the way customs officials opened up his luggage to find it contained all manner of strange taxonomy – mummified monkey hands, testicles and fangs all for the Chinese black market. They will import anything for their insane methods of homeopathic invigoration, and it’s big business. I could find no trace of this man in the news but I found a similar article about jaguar poachers in the Bolivian Amazon and one similar man smuggling testicles back to China, selling them for ridiculous prices. Allegedly just one jaguar fang can fetch up to $200 and are seen as a power symbol. Testicles are valued like silver or gold and are believed to be symbols of male virility.
Illegal mining and smuggling go hand in hand as with any project, the Chinese will bring their own workforce with them to build ports, roads and bridges to make their sites more accessible. Bolivia is in dire need of Chinese built roads, but not all the underhand stuff that is inseparable. These workers bring with them their insatiable desire for strange amulets. In the north of Bolivia, in the tourist town of Rurrenabaque, a Chinese citizen was raided and all manner of strange objects were confiscated but the evidence all mysteriously ‘disappeared,’ There are some powerful players at work in this shady business.

I started losing the plot in Sucre. My routine dropped off; I didn’t touch my laptop or my notebook for quite some time. I hung on to some routine, but I kept making excuses for myself, ones I cant quite remember as I look back. To counterbalance my laziness I took a week of Spanish lessons and even though the teacher flirted outrageously with me the whole time, I think I learnt something…