Things that happen when you're not paying attention

Witches Market in La Paz

You're in a new country, you can't speak the language very well, things occasionally tend to go tits up.

We were in Bolivia's capital, La Paz about to head down to the southern town of Sucre. As we bought the tickets for our comfy bus, we thought it odd that the guy behind the counter was motioning at us to check our backpacks in already when we had ages to go. It's like going on a plane. You check the bags in at a counter and you're given a ticket with which to collect it at the other end. Still it was easier eating horrible 'station cafe' grub without lugging our huge backpacks with us.

So, we headed to board our 7:30pm bus. The first hint of panic came when we handed our tickets to the guard and he stared at us with a shocked look muttering, "salida, salida" and pointing at the door. Jody and I gave each other blank looks but when we headed back to the cashier' s desk to complain about the crazy man, we finally got it.

The bus already left - almost an hour ago! And not only had we wasted our money but our sodding backpacks were still on board! Everything except the clothes we were wearing and passports were in those bags and now there was a distinct possibility we'd never see them again. Complete stupidity turned into blind panic. Our luggage was winging its way across the country on a luxury bus - without us.

The only course of action was to get the next available bus and chase our bags across the country. Unfortunately for us, we were going to have to go 10 hours to Potosi (the highest city in the world and one we'd been trying to avoid) and then find another bus on to Sucre. However, we'd heard so much about the bag thieves in South America that despite the cashier's reassurance that when we got to the other end we'd just have to show the tickets to get the bags back - we were already getting frantic.

And luck definately wasn't on our side. The only other bus leaving that night was a 'normal' coach (very cheap but cramped) and it seemed like every Bolivian in La Paz wanted to get on it. Women with kids, women carrying sacks of Bolivia t-shirts, a group of drunks (who got the back seats and shouted all night) and some old women, who had a row over seats so fierce that the conductor had to get on to calm them down.

When we finally left La Paz two hours late, Jody's legs had already seized up from lack of legroom and we were forced to sit through an hour of a guy screaming through the coach about digestive problems, showing a flip-chart of the internal organs as he tried to flog some 'miracle' cure. I pretended to go to sleep but listened as he was laughed at by the other passengers. Unsurprisingly, nobody bought any. Just as I thought we'd got rid of him and could get some peace, another guy got on selling his answer for back problems.

Eventually, I managed to curl my body onto the seat to doze but I have no trouble sleeping on buses. In fact, I have trouble staying awake! However, the worry of the backpacks kept rousing me and we spent a lot of time disecting the contents of our bag wondering which clothes/books/medicines we'd have trouble living without . Apart from one toilet stop (no loo on board), around 4am at a Bolivian version of a 'Little Chef' (some deserted cafe in the middle of nowhere), at least there were no more disruptions.

Despite the much famed attractions in Potosi, we were so worried about the altitude (4100m) that we practically ran into the bus station there and got the first one we could - staying a possible record of about 15 minutes. We managed to see a few of the city's famous churches as we left. With it being a Sunday, the bus driver treated us to a tape of terrible wannabe singers belting out church songs, probably recorded at his local service the week before. No chance of a nap here then either.

Three hours later, Sucre bus terminal looked deserted. We eventually found a guy manning the 'Trans Copacabana' office and after about five minutes of sign language and us waving the tickets at him, he announced that our bags were in the cargo store across the road. I must have looked thrilled as Jody told me not to relax until we'd seen that they were in fact OUR bags. It was a tense moment, but there at the back of the dusty warehouse were our backpacks. I practically threw the tickets at the man. Sucre's a pretty city, but that day we didn't see any of it - we went straight to bed.

Where are we? Still in Sucre enjoying the warm weather. Someone's bravely given us a voluntary job teaching English to people who can't normally afford to learn. I have a class rowdy 10-year-olds while Jody's teens are angelic by comparison.

Leaving La Paz

Your standard, rammed Bolivian market

La Paz appears to be back to normal again. The streets are rammed with markets, bus loads of tourists are arriving and you can't cross the road for fear of being run over.

New people checked into our hotel (El Solario) for the first time all week and men are working to repair the ripped up cobble-stone roads (a few days ago, protesters dug them up and piled the bricks for blockades). Hell, it was even warm and sunny today.

Now that the petrol stations are open again there are huge queues for fuel, so bus services aren't back to normal yet. This means that we're stuck here until Monday, before we head to Copacabana.

Although at times things were tense and terrifying, I'm glad that we were here when La Paz was on the brink of civil war. I couldn't imagine a friendlier war zone than Bolivia! It shows the true colours of the people here, that even when they're fleeing tear gas rockets, they still have time to apologise for the mess the streets are in and ask if we need help getting back to our hotel.

We befriended a lot of people here during the trouble, such as shop owners and one person I'm particularly impressed with being on first name terms with - a witch from the witches market . I'm sure if we run into any other problems in South America, she can help us out by rustling up a plague of locusts, or something.

It's great to see that locals are able to earn a living again. And the sight last week of kids playing football on a street that today is once again choked with traffic, will stay with me for a long time.

From now on, we'll resume normal frequency of blog posts (one every few days), because no one wants to hear about La Paz living up to it's name (in English: 'The Peace').

Urban Gadabout: Jamaica Bay, here I come!

See below for information about the Jamaica Bay Ecology Cruise leaving from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, on June 24.by Ken

Some years back I had the pleasure of providing overnight accommodations to a friend who had a layover in New York on his journey from the Midwest abroad, and because he'd never been in the city, I went to the airport to meet him and drag him all the way back to my place in Washington Heights -- not quite as long a distance as you could have within the five boroughs of NYC, but a long distance anyways.

The Air Train was up and running by then, providing -- for the first time! -- easy access from JFK to the Howard Beach station of the A train for the long trip back to my place, but I still feel kind of bad about what I did. Instead of doing the logical thing and planting us on the Manhattan-bound platform, I dragged my poor friend to the opposite platform, from which the A train begins what I consider an amazing trip across Jamaica Bay to the Rockaway peninsula.


I think of this as one of the amazing rail journeys a person can make for the price of a subway fare. I do it at least a couple of times a year, even if I have no desire actually to be in the Rockaways. I realized, though, that my friend had no interest in this little ocean voyage by rail, or in my labored efforts to explain the geography of our journey. I suppose it was understandable that his mind was more wrapped up in the long and laborious trip still ahead of him, and the several months he would be spending in his remote destination.

I thought about that day when I took my most recent trip across Jamaica Bay, but for the first time not all the way across the bay. At the Broad Channel station, the next stop after Howard Beach, I was getting off to meet a tour group led by the incomparable Justin Ferate, which would begin with a walk through the community of Howard Beach -- an extremely right-wing neighborhood with a heavy concentration of police and firefighters -- as the start of a mile-and-a-half walk to the visitor center of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. As many times as I've made the train crossing of Jamaica Bay, I never had any idea there even was such a destination.

I was caught short again when some of my fellow tour-group members not only had never done the Jamaica Bay train ride but really didn't even know where they were. They had followed Justin's instructions (in some cases never having set foot on an A train before) and arrived at the designated subway station and found the designated meeting place, but the rest was a mystery to them.

Jamaica Bay has always been a mystery to me, but not that kind of mystery. I've always been a compulsive map-reader, and when my family moved to New York when I was 12, and I began to become obsessed with the map of NYC, my eyes were riveted by that enormous expanse of bay bounded by the coasts of Brooklyn, "mainland" Queens, and the Rockaways. So when I saw that Justin was doing a walking tour of the Wildlife Refuge, I got my check in the mail immediately. And it was a terrific afternoon tramping around the most accessible portions of the refuge guided by Don Riepe, director of the Northeast Chapter of the American Littoral Society, and the enormously capable and charming Elizabeth, who works with Don.

It was a wonderful but exhausting afternoon, and I'm going to share something with "Urban Gadabout" readers which I somehow managed not to mention to readers of my DownWithTyranny "Sunday Classics" posts. (I'm figuring there isn't much overlap between the readerships, even making the large and presumptuous assumption that either has any readership.)

I've written several posts now based on the New York Concert Artists series of "Evenings of Piano Concerti," including today's, and while it's true that most of what interested me had already happened in the first three concerts, I never got around to mentioning that I blew off the fourth and final one, because that Saturday I would have had to go straight from the Jamaica Bay outing to Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church on Manhattan's West Side, with possibly time to stop at a conveniently located branch of my gym to shower. And the next day I had walking tours scheduled first in the Bronx (the second walk in Jack Eichenbaum's terrific Municipal Art Society series of South Bronx walks, which began in March with Mott Haven and concludes June 24 with Morrisania) and then in Brooklyn (the New York Transit Museum tour of several historic subway stations, which I wrote about recently).

There's more to that story, including tales of a number of other upcoming events around the city, but I'm going to leave that for sometime soon, maybe even tomorrow, in order to pass on news that Don and Elizabeth shared with us before we left the Wildlife Refuge.

June 24 - Jamaica Bay Sunset Cruises (3pm-6pm)

Leave from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn aboard the "Golden Sunshine" for a narrated tour of Jamaica Bay. Learn about the history, ecology, wildlife and management of the refuge and see egrets, herons, osprey, peregrine falcon, terns, shorebirds and waterfowl. Cost: $45 includes tour, wine & cheese, fruit, drink, snacks. Call (718) 318-9344; e-mail: donriepe@gmail.com. You can also make payment here. (With Gateway NRA and NYC Audubon.)

You may have noticed that the date is the same as Jack Eichenbaum's walk through Morrisania in the Bronx. Yes, once again, as with both previous installments in Jack's Bronx series, I'm headed straight from there to Brooklyn!

More about upcoming walking tours of Jack's, and some other tantalizing events, in the next installment.