from a range of about ten metres,
with an occasional thud of bullets into
the thick adobe mud wall. From the
direction of the airport came sounds
of huge explosions. Our group should
have flown out to Australia by now,
but we certainly weren’t going any-
where in a hurry soon.
Street marches of several thousand
were occurring daily by now from El
Alto into La Paz and poor Roberto, as
head of his family, was press-ganged
into participating. He returned ex-
hausted each evening, having walked
12 hilly kilometres or so, to a gaggle
of questioning, frustrated, ill-tem-
pered and increasingly unwanted for-
eign house guests.
Unable to even poke our heads
out of the gate for fear of attracting
attention upon Roberto’s family, we
amused ourselves during the day
with chess tournaments, card games,
and practicing mutual English/Span-
ish lessons with the family children.
Meanwhile, we’d been in touch
with the Australian Embassy two or
three times daily since the second
morning. Bolivia doesn’t have an
Australian Embassy, so we had been
calling the nearest one, in Santiago
de Chile.
It must be said that they were com-
pletely, utterly, totally, useless to us.
They did nothing in five days but pay
lip service and assure us that things
appeared to be settling down and we
should sit tight because we were in a
much safer position than many oth-
ers trapped in the airport or the city.
Quite often, we were more a
source of information to them than
they were to us, even though they had
the resources of cable television, the
internet, and a worldwide network
of highly-financed diplomatic offices
to call upon, while we were incarcer-
ated in a mud hut in the middle of a
war zone with just a couple of mobile
phones.
We'd been able to inform them, for
example, that the German Embassy
had arranged a charter flight into/out
of the military airport in El Alto to
evacuate 140 German nationals, de-
spite the fact that they (our Embassy)
had been in conference with all the
European embassies just a couple of
hours earlier and had not been in-
formed of such plans. The one thing
they did do for us was to inform our
relatives back home in Australia that
we were all alive and well ... and rel-
atively safe.
In the end, one of our group mem-
bers had a friend in Sydney, who
contacted a friend in Melbourne,
who contacted a friend in Peru, who
contacted a friend in the Peruvian
Air Force who somehow managed,
on the evening of Thursday the 16th,
to secure seats for our group on an
evacuation flight from La Paz to Lima
for 10:00am the following morning.
When the Australian Embassy subse-
quently contacted us on said morning
of the 17th, they had the audacity to
appear jolly pleased with themselves
that they had managed to learn that
we had acquired this flight on our
own without any assistance.
Our group walked at least four
kilometres to the airport on the Fri-
day morning with our luggage, past
still-smouldering piles of burnt tyres
and various other blockade devic-
es, through wary, suspicious crowds
with children calling ‘gringo’.
When we arrived we discovered,
of course, that it was not just a sim-
ple matter of enquiring where the
10:00am evacuation flight might hap-
pen to be found. We had to walk even
further to the military section of the
airport, the flight was then late arriv-
ing, there were many other desper-
ate people who considered they had
higher priority, we didn’t have any
tickets, etc. In the end the miracle
did occur,.
A relieved Aussie group finally flew
out at 7:00pm bound for Lima.
The ultimate irony of the whole
episode was that at 4:00pm, while we
were still waiting for their flight, the
embattled President of Bolivia final-
TRAVERSE
52
ly admitted defeat and publicly re-
signed from office in disgrace, fleeing
the country in his private jet, bound
for Miama, Florida, USA ...
Ten days later, here I am, finally
at a computer able to answer emails,
making notes of this episode, get-
ting it out of my system. Tomorrow
should be an interesting day ... MF
FOOTNOTE: the following days
were interesting, things returned to
normal and Mike was able to show
more people around this newly liber-
ated country.
The uprising of the indigenous
people and labour groups of Bolivia
came to a head in October of 2003.
Explotation of Bolivia's natural re-
sources can be traced as far back as
the 15th century.
When it erupted into protests and
violence in 2003 60 people were left
dead, most from the El Alto region.
The protests set in motion a num-
ber changes that saw successive
presidents toppled leading to a full
nationalisation of the nations hydro-
carbon increased the states revenue
sixfold.
While a perfect outcome wasn't
achieved it has seen a much better
outcome for Bolivia and especially
it's indigenous people; a number of
which now serve in government, in-
cluding president, Evo Morales.
Bolivia might be regarded as South
America's poorest country yet it is one
that often provides the richest experi-
ences for the motorcycle traveller.
Like the sound of adventure riding
in Bolovia, then Mike can help with
that, visit www.worldonwheels.tours
for more information.