Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay

Leaving La Paz, Heading South

Today has been a bust. I tried to go to the gym at 10am, when they
opened, to get some exercise before having a quick shower back at the
hostal and checking out by 11am. Of course, the gym opened half an
hour late. I did a quick max set of pull-ups (13, new personal best!)
and dips (15, somewhere near a personal best, I think). At 12,000
feet! Woo.

After that, I spent three hours trying to send a box to the US. The
box is smallish and weighs 1.5 kg. DHL wanted USD$150 to send it. At
the post office, there're multiple floors with a bunch of different
agencies, each of which has a different set of rules, places they can
ship to, fare charts, etc. The cheapest place I found wouldn't ship
the box because they only ship packages OVER 2 kg. The lady asked me
what things I had on me that had weight. We had to open up the box and
stuff it with whatever I had on me to make it weigh enough: an old
Bolivian magazine, six packages of fiber cookies, and two rolls of
toilet paper! 2.1 kg. Perfect. That cost USD$21 or so and will arrive
in "one to one and a half months." Hahahahah! And they gave me a
tracking number too. Maybe it'll go on a steam boat.

This afternoon, I've tried to finagle my way into visiting a prison
here called Carcel San Pedro. There used to be some "tours,"
unofficially, but everything has been shut down since a news story a
few weeks ago about tourists buying cocaine IN the prison, where it's
produced/refined, and the detention of a few Canadians. I met a Dutch
woman here who runs a tour agency, who knows a guy who used to bribe
the guards to do the tours. I pushed the public health perspective,
saying that I'd been in San Quentin doing pre-parole advising of
inmates and the MDC in Albuquerque doing general practice and STD
care. No dice. It looks like it isn't going to work out as things are
simply too "hot" for any of the guards to risk letting a foreigner in.

I'm heading south to Uyuni tonight to try to link up with a tour of
the salt flats near there. I'll probably be without Internet of any
sort for four days or so. After that, I plan to continue south into
Argentina and stay in Salta for a while. I have less than two weeks
left, but it'd be nice to settle in there, find good restaurants,
sleep more, be out of the pollution of places like La Paz, that kind
of thing.

posted by daviduri @ 1:00 PM