Angela's Andean Adventures.
An Extract From "Full Circle".
The following text is taken from
Michael Palin's "Full Circle" which
was first published in 1997 and has been reprinted five times.
ARICA, Day 178.
At the port of Arica, only 12 miles from the Peruvian border, it is
Army Day. Which is quite suitable really as it was through military
action that Chile acquired Arica in the first place. In the War of the
Pacific, between 1789 and 1883, Chile seized Arica and Tarapaca province
from Peru as well as a large chunk of Bolivia, including all her coastline.
The sound of a twenty-one gun salute early this morning and the presence
of General Pinochet in town reinforces my impression that the traditional
hierarchy of Chile - rich landowners and old families in alliance with
conservative and highly trained armed forces - is still firmly in place.
Stir myself for an early morning run by the Pacific. The sea must be
rich here for there are sea birds everywhere. Great gangling pelicans,
storm-petrels, boobys, skuas and shearwaters skim the waves while red-beaked
oystercatchers scuttle up and down the foreshore and forbidding red-headed
turkey vultures glare balefully from the rocks. The clouds are low,
thick and depressing. The cold, offshore current which bears the name
of its nineteenth century discoverer, Humboldt, condenses the warm desert
air into a low and formless mist which blots out the sun and envelops
the Pacific coast as far north as Panama for eight months of the year.
It looks like rain-cloud, but it never rains here. Odd to think that
the world's most abundant source of water and its driest desert can
exist side by side.
Day 179.
Roger has made the sensational discovery that General Pinochet was beneath
our roof last night, being feted at an Army Day banquet. Just to prove
it, he got out his rarely-seen camera and took his first photographs
on the entire Pacific Rim journey - twenty four views of General Pinochet
leaving the El Paso Hotel, Arica. "They are for history", he says, modestly.
Instead of following the fog-bound Pacific coast, we have decided to
travel by rail and river from Bolivia into the Peruvian interior, across
the Altiplano (the high plains of the Andes) and down into the river
system which leads eventually to the Amazon and the remote southern
reaches of Colombia. It is potentially by far the most difficult and
dangerous stretch of our journey. "No gain without pain" will be the
motto of the next few weeks. When, and if, we emerge from the Colombian
jungle, the reward will be the prospect of North America and a relatively
"civilised" race to the finish.
Arica's tiny station is only a few hundred yards from the ocean, where
hefty breakers smash onto the rocks with lazy, effortless strength.
We needn't have hurried. There is no sign of the eight o'clock departure
for La Paz. A half dozen mangy cats lope off behind the bushes as we
unload our bags. On the tiny platform there is a memorial to one
"John
Roberts Jones, Ingeniero, who oversaw construction of the line into
Arica and died of malaria on the 18th of February 1911." My mind goes
back to Pringle Stokes of the Beagle, whose memorial lies two and a
half thousand miles away, beside a snow-covered beach at the other end
of Chile, and I wonder what it was that induced both men to come so
far from home and risk their lives in such pitiless climates. They didn't
even have the BBC as an excuse.
A single ticket to La Paz costs 52 dollars, "in clean US bills
only,"
my guidebook adds. Once paid, there is nothing to do but wait. When
the train that is to take us over the Andes finally arrives there is
a palpable sense of anti-climax amongst the sprinkling of mainly foreign
travellers who have been checking their watches with increasing anxiety
for the past hour. All that stands between us and Bolivia is a single
dusty, silver-grey railbus, designed and built in Germany thirty years
ago to potter around the suburbs of Munich. Like Pringle Stokes and
John Roberts Jones it seems destined to end its life far from home.
And, from the look of it, quite soon.
Every item of heavy baggage, and we have forty-eight, is hoisted onto
the roof by the stationmaster assisted by his wife, and endlessly cheerful
lady in a beige cardigan. Vitaliano, the driver, helps from time to
time. He has been driving the Ferrobus since 1992, he says, and adds
proudly: "I have been filmed four times." (Not exactly what we want
to hear.)
We leave precisely on the hour, although not the hour we were meant
to leave precisely on. We have a driver, an assistant driver, a steward
and twenty-five passengers on board, including Linda, the big American
we last saw on the MV Puerto Eden and her boyfriend who today sports
a "Name your Poison" T-shirt with a death's head on it. No one dares
ask when we might reach La Paz. The word "nightfall" is vaguely mentioned.
This could be optimistic, at the rate we're going. The first stop is
not for a station, but to change the points, a cumbersome business which
requires the assistant driver to climb out, walk up the line, unlock
a pad-locked lever, change the points and repeat the whole process in
reverse after the train has passed.
About 20 miles out of Arica we ride a long left hand bend over the river
and are suddenly and dramatically into the desert. The orchards, pastures
and maize fields of the Lluta Valley recede below us like a thin, green
glacier. The last remnants of the coastal fog are burnt away: The sun
glares down. Our little coach, reduced to a speck in a mighty landscape,
climbs slowly, and with frightening gear changes. We seem to hang on
the mountainside in a perilous limbo, as the cogs struggle to sort themselves
out. And it is steep. Within a distance of 25 miles we climb 7500 feet.
A thin plastic water pipe runs beside the line. Without it we probably
wouldn't get across the Andes. Wherever there is a spigot the driver
stops the train, fills a red plastic bucket and refreshes the engine
cooling system, which is working harder as the air gets thinner.
I'm beginning to feel light-headed myself. We've all been warned of
the effects of altitude sickness, but all I feel at the moment is a
curious elation, a kind of couldn't-care-less contentment. Now I know
why they call it being high.
Six and a half hours after leaving Arica we have reached the Chilean
frontier. A faded sign shows the official altitude to be 13,305 feet.
There is not much here. A few derelict sheds, some stone buildings from
more prosperous time which now provide little more than walls to urinate
behind and shade for those getting off the train for a smoke (not allowed
on board). All around us stretches the altiplano, a wide, treeless plateau
of boggy grassland in shades from rich emerald to lemon green, bordered
by the implacable white peaks - Putre, 19,102 feet, Larrancagua, 17,712
feet and the mighty volcano Sajama, its cone rising 21,500 feet. The
air is clean and pure and the sunshine quite blinding. I stride off
up the line to get the best view. Feel giddy after a few steps and have
to slow down. I notice too that the ink flows more thinly from my pen
as I try to make a note of what happened.
A mile further on, across a no-man's land, populated only by grazing
llamas, is the Bolivian border town of Charana. It's pretty clear from
the look of the people and the condition of the buildings that we have
crossed more than just a line on the map. Chile has a per capita GNP
of 2730 dollars. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, with
a per capita GNP of 680 dollars. Most Chileans are mestizos, of mixed
Spanish and Indian blood, sixty per cent of Bolivians are pure Indian.
No one in Chile wears a bowler hat. In Charana all the women seem to
have them. The military in Chile are always immaculate. The soldiers
on the Bolivian frontier wear shapeless baggy trousers, tight, creased
jackets and cotton forage hats.
The only sign of any investment in Charana is a gleaming new set of
Banos Publicos, certainly the finest public conveniences I've seen since
Santiago. I find them firmly locked. I suppose it makes sense; the public
would only make a mess of them.
Linda, the American, is taking the altitude badly. She says she had
been told there was oxygen on the train and there wasn't and she had
mimed to the steward that she badly needed to sniff something and he
had said rather huffily, "No, that is Colombia, we do not have that
here." In the end they sorted it out and they gave her a large mug of
coca leaf tea, which he was not allowed to serve in Chile. Coca leaves
contain cocaine, and are chewed by the people of the Andes as commonly
as we smoke tobacco.
We are now over the watershed and rattling downhill. The driver bounce
up and down on his seat like a man on a pogo stick, and the coca tea
is flying everywhere. This does wonders for conradeship and soon the
two New Zealand girls who are travelling with their mother, "to all
try and get to know each other", are talking to the German with the
Peruvian wife and nineteen-month-old baby, Linda and the Dutch backpackers
are comparing altitude sickness and the two Norwegians who were robbed
in Ecuador are chatting up two heavily tanned girls from Brisbane. Outside
it grows dark and very cold. The cold stops everyone talking and after
we've eaten our chicken and chips we try to sleep as the little rail-car
bumps and grinds precariously towards La Paz.
It seems wholly predictable when, shortly after our twelfth hour on
the train and within an ace of La Paz, there is a jarring whine, a lurch
and silence. We are derailed. The driver reaches for a torch and climbs
down. Voices are raised, a small crowd of people emerge from the darkness.
The front wheels are off, and the baggage mountain on top of the train
is tilted at a dangerously jaunty angle. Opinions are passed round.
The driver disappears into the darkness with a shovel. He comes back
with a pile of earth and stones which he tips into the space between
the line and the unclosed point. Others dig around for stones and throw
them on as well.
There are two small children among the crowd of locals which has gathered.
I ask them if they have ever seen anyone try to put a train back on
the line like this before. They nod cheerfully. This is how they always
do it. I shouldn't worry, they say, it only takes half an hour. Sure
enough, half an hour later, after some frenzied throttling, the whirring
wheels catch the rubble and climb back on the line.
Cold and tired we may be but our adventures are not over yet. The approach
to La Paz is dramatic. The city is built in an enormous canyon into
which we descend in a series of corkscrew spirals. The glittering lights
of the city below promise excitement and glamour but the closer view
is depressing. The line is unfenced and neglected. At times the track
disappears from sight beneath sand, dirt and stones. Packs of bony dogs
prowl ahead of us, picking at the scattered piles of rubbish. Two drunks
are caught in the headlamps walking alone the line, balancing shakily
on the rail and laughing. Perhaps the final indignity, as we wind our
way down into the city, is finding two tall iron gates closed against
us. The drivers, whose patience has been saintly, grab torches and climb
down yet again. Eventually a lady in a red shawl and a billowing pink
dress emerges from a shed, takes out a key and carefully unlocks the
gates. The drivers remount only to find that, while they were out, a
passing drunk has climbed into the train. He's mistaken us for his bus
home and is quite confused. The driver ejects him and we edge forward
through the gates, which the lady in the pink dress locks after us,
only to find ourselves in the middle of a city street. The driver hoots
back at cars, themselves indignant at finding a train from Chile in
the middle of their traffic jam. It is a wondrous, surreal finale to
a journey which comes to an end a few minutes later at a deserted, unexpectedly
handsome station, fourteen hours after leaving Arica.
We've covered the distance at an average speed of 16.4 miles an hour.
But no one's complaining. There were many times during this momentous
day when we thought we'd be lucky to get here at all.
La Paz, Day 180.
Seroche. That's what I'm suffering from. It's a Spanish word, and has
a glamorous ring to it that the English counterpart, "altitude
sickness",
sadly lacks.
All of us, in varying degrees, "soroched", and we shall spend two days
here retuning our systems for a further week of high altitude travel
that lies ahead.
La Paz, or La Cuidad de Nuestra Senora De La Paz as it was was named
by Alonzo de Mendoza, its Spanish founder, in 1548, is a strange place.
The highest capital in the world at 12,000 feet, but at the bottom of
a hole. The rich live at the foot of the hill and the poor at the top.
Mud-walled houses are piled up the walls of the canyon, while a modern
high-rise city occupies the centre. Between the two is a labyrinth of
steep streets that tempt the eye but test the unacclimatised walker.
Street traders seem to have taken over the centre of La Paz. The pavements
groan beneath the sackfuls of socks, piles of shoes, mountains of embroidered
brassieres and hectares of Stayprest trousers. Beside them sit Indian
men and women, known as cholos or cholas, in from the country. The women
are particularly distinctive, wearing felt bowlers perched on top of
dark, centrally parted, often plaited hair and carrying their worldly
goods in fat cloth bundles. Their dresses are made from various combinations
of bright, shiny material and worn wide and full over multiple petticoats.
Apparently the whole outfit was foisted on the Indians by Spanish law
over two hundred years ago.
Despite, or maybe because of this, the Indians resolutely refused to
take Spanish as their first language and even today mostly speak only
the Indian languages of Aymara or Quechua. And they don't like being
photographed. Basil has had water flicked at him by several ladies and
aspersions cast on his legitimacy, In Aymara and Quechua.
Higher up the hills behind the find stone facade of the Basilica of
San Francisco I find very odd things for sale, including dried llama
foetuses. Apparently they bring good luck. I'm told that no self-respecting
new building goes up in La Paz without a llama foetus in the foundations.
(Other bits of llama are put to good use as well. La Paz was the first
capital in South America to have its own electricity supply. It was
powered in those early days by llama dung.)
Minibuses squeeze past me through the streets with children at their
open doorways shouting a list of destinations in a lilting monotone,
like a priest absolving sins. Shoe blacks who can't be more than eight
or nine years old, shout "Blanco!" and point accusingly at my travel-worn
trainers. It's a disorderly entertaining city and I return to the sober,
more expensive anonymity of the commercial district tired but happy,
in time to watch the sun slip behind the surrounding hills and the canyon
walls turn into a carpet of sparkling lights.
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