I did manage to put down a few paragraphs in the last few weeks. They’re not up to much but I’m sick of wrestling with them, so in order to get these monkeys off my back I’ll present them in their rough form and hope for the best.
The Argentine lad who rented us bikes in Salta described his country’s northern neighbour, Bolivia, as “exotic”. I wasn’t sure what he meant at the time. I am now. Argentina is another country. Bolivia is another world. It’s the South America you think you should read about in the books that consistently make the top 100 lists of broadsheet cultural supplements, written by men with Spanish sounding names and internationally recognised literature awards. It’s distinct and “real” in the rather patronising way travellers (myself included) sometimes have of classifying the authenticity of their experiences – as if your experience of Brazil or Argentina were any less grounded in reality for having hot water, good roads and punctual public transport.
But the atmosphere is different here and not just because of the altitude. It’s haphazard and chaotic in a soporific kind of way, like the movement of bees in a smoke-filled hive. Things are constructed in a mend-and-make-do fashion. They get busted and break down but are fixed in the space of a few hours like grandpa’s shovel. It feels like the whole place is held together by eight-gage wire and bailing twine. And that’s not a criticism.
Despite Bolivia’s relatively recent recruitment to the list of South American countries the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade doesn’t feel compelled to terrify visitors into avoiding, it’s already pretty well established on the tourist trail. Mainly this is because it’s an oasis of cheap living on a continent of affordability. It’s where you go in South America when you’re long on time and short on money.
That’s not to say that there isn’t heaps to see and do here. It’s just that other places in South America are easier to get to and get around. And it doesn’t have any beaches.
The country’s biggest tourist draw card is the spectacular Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat, which sits amid an astonishingly barren but beautiful stretch of the Andes Mountains. A four-day, four-wheel-drive tour of the region will set you back something in the region of $100US, which is incredible value provided you’re getting what the agents are showing on the tin.
We’d heard mixed reports about the quality of the salt flat tours, with some travellers complaining of drunk drivers and inedibly bad food. One rumour doing the rounds told of a couple of English girls being abandoned in the middle of the altiplane desert, which prompted us to adopt a don’t-pay-the-ferryman approach to reimbursing the tour company for their services.
The fact our tour was delayed by a day due to a general strike by cabbies and bus drivers protesting for the right to get behind the wheel while drunk was slightly concerning. But we needn’t have worried. As well as being a paragon of sobriety our driver, Bernardo, was a superstar and possibly the most cheerful bloke on the planet. His ready and frequent laugh fell somewhere between Woody Woodpecker’s manic cackle and the delighted chuckle of a small boy who has just done something wildly inappropriate and gotten away with it.
Alongside being Bolivia’s most cheerful chap, Bernardo was also a hell of a bush mechanic, repairing punctures and replacing shock absorbers in the time it took us to see a sight or eat a lunch. I lost count of the number of times we returned from taking photographs to find the little bloke’s feet poking out from under the vehicle, a happy little song drifting up through the engine bay. A few moments later he’d be up and dusting himself off, with whatever minor problem he was working on fixed and buttoned down.
He’d often be so preoccupied with his vehicle that he’d miss his lunch, something we always felt guilty about and compelled to rectify through the provision of snacks. On day two, after suffering a couple of minor mechanical failures, Bernardo worked through the lunch-break to make the vehicle fit to complete another five hours of hard driving. When we got back to the car we asked him if he’d eaten anything for lunch and, as was the usual custom, he claimed that he had. It was clearly a lie and as soon as we were on our way Alan reached for the enormous packet of assorted biscuits he’d purchased before departure and started handing them around the car.
The first two times the bag came around, Bernardo showed considerable restraint, taking just one or two biscuits. By the third time the packet came forward his urge for sustenance had clearly outstripped his urge for courtesy and he grabbed a fistful and walloped the whole lot past his grinning gob, letting out a muffled “muchas gracias” as a cascade of crumbs fell down his shirtfront.
It was just about the highlight of the trip until two days later, when handing around a bag of coca leaves. For the sake of my mother, I will take this opportunity to point out that coca leaves are legal in Bolivia and while they are the base ingredient for both cocaine and a number of prescription painkillers, they offer only a mild stimulant effect when consumed in leaf or tea form and are considered by the local people to be a pretty effective means of curing everything from altitude sickness and stomach aches to accidentally burning your eyes out with a curling iron.
The preferred technique for coca leaf consumption is to de-stem the leaves, shove a handful in your cheek, nibble off a bit of catalyst (basically bicarbonate of soda or something similar to stimulate saliva flow) and suck on that bad boy until it looses its structural integrity or your face goes numb.
Surprisingly enough, despite his frequent exposure to high altitude, Bernardo suffered a bit from altitude sickness, so when the coca leaves did the rounds he became what can only be described as very excited indeed.
He was like a little kid eating chocolate buttons at a friend’s birthday party. Great handfuls of leaves disappeared into his mouth and his cheek swelled as if he’d developed an ulcer under a bad tooth. When Alan temporarily withdrew the bag from between the front seats to extract a few leaves for himself, Bernardo’s hand probed and groped the vacant space until the bag’s return.
Bear in mind that while all this was going on we were travelling along a corrugated dirt road at speeds approaching 100kmph. The provision of stimulants to those in charge of potentially lethal machinery is generally frowned upon but I’d happily do it again to get a repeat of the moment when, cheek pouch limit reached, Bernardo turned to me, fixed me in a wide eyed stare and let out a long, satisfied “mmmmmmm” before turning his attention back to the long road ahead.
Language is overrated.
What a smashing treat it is to go barrelling across the top of the world, a massive wadge of coca leaves in your cheek to ward off the symptoms of altitude sickness, a gormless smile plastered across your numb lips. The otherworldly scenery is absolutely stunning and I won’t try to describe it. I’ll post up some pictures when the bandwidth allows.
Sadly, I get the feeling the place is already wrecked in a man-destroying-the-things-he-loves kind of way. It pains me to say that. In more ways than one.
The first reason is that I think it’s true. The tracks are potholed, dusty and corrugated but they are extremely well trodden. In a place which is partially marketed on the offer of solitude and isolation there’s precious little of it on offer. A bank of 4x4s lines every sight to see and the ground is littered with rubbish. On the second night of our trip I went outside to watch the sunset and counted 18 tourist vehicles parked up outside the newly custom-made dorms. At least 60 people must have been staying in our village alone.
We’re about ten years away from a five star resort and spa being constructed next to the insanely impressive slat flats of Uyuni, which will offer rejuvenating salt-pack facials and coca leaf enemas between day trips to the mountains and lagoons that punctuate the high planes. But who am I to say that’s a bad thing?
And that brings me neatly to the second reason it pains me to say the place is losing its appeal, which is that saying that makes me sound like the kind of pretentious bore who sits in hostel common-rooms wearing cargo trousers and canvas shoes, telling everyone who’ll listen about the best technique for sleeping on a ferry and how they’ve been travelling for 900 years with only 600 grams of luggage. Any person who’s spent more than a few hours in a hostel will be familiar with this grizzled, backpacking cliché. You’ll find him lurking in the kitchens and hovering over the PCs waiting to swoop on an unsuspecting novice to regale them with tales of previous adventures, the punch line of every story being: “But that was ten years ago… It’s ruined now of course.”
Twat.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
Thursday, 25 March 2010
THE BLACK HOLE OF LA PAZ
Sorry about the lack of communication in recent times, but I was trapped in the black hole of La Paz for five days and it’s taken the accumulation of a few less taxing evenings to come to physical and mental terms with the withering nature of that city’s recreational activities. It’s a fun town but not one that lends itself to the compilation of coherent thoughts, even of the unstructured and haphazard variety that I manage to present to this forum. Fortunately, the tranquillity of Lake Titicaca has provided a salve to the bumps and grazes left by the all-night parties of the world’s largest high-altitude city.
All that, of course, is just a convoluted way of saying that that the words haven’t come easily over the last three weeks and I’ve been too lazy to sit down and grind it out at the laptop. We’ve all done some incredible, indescribable things in that time, many of which I can’t do justice in words, so I’ll pitch up the following photographs and let you draw your own conclusions.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
All that, of course, is just a convoluted way of saying that that the words haven’t come easily over the last three weeks and I’ve been too lazy to sit down and grind it out at the laptop. We’ve all done some incredible, indescribable things in that time, many of which I can’t do justice in words, so I’ll pitch up the following photographs and let you draw your own conclusions.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
Friday, 12 March 2010
RAWHIDE
My Mum tells a story about my Dad’s first time on a horse, the punch line of which is that the man who is so adept at so many of the things he tries, could only get the animal to go in reverse.
The ability to back a horse up is apparently a difficult skill to acquire but unfortunately for the old boy it isn’t so highly prized when not allied to a similar deftness in making the horse operate in the forward gear settings.
I relate this tale not to show Dad up but to demonstrate that horsemanship is not something that runs in the Atkinson bloodlines. This is perhaps unsurprising considering that we descend from Irish peasants, whose experience of equine stock was probably limited to the occasional trampling beneath the hooves of the squire’s horse.
Sadly, on yesterday’s evidence it would seem that genetic inheritance goes beyond the mere transference of physical traits and, along with my slightly ginger hair and slender physique, I appear to have acquired my father’s ability to instruct a mount to completely ignore my instructions and do whatever the hell it likes, something I thoroughly demonstrated through my ability to get the horse to munch on grass and bite my foot.
Despite my best efforts to make my bloody animal behave in the same predictable and civilized manner as everyone else’s, my pony just wouldn’t be told. That I didn’t know what to tell it was possibly a contributing factor but it came as no surprise when, thirty minutes into the ride, the gelding stumbling twice and developed a heavy stoop over the left forelock. We clearly weren’t getting along.
I drew this to the attention of the guide who studied Moro’s gait for a second before motioning for me to pull up and dismount.
“Lame?” I said.
“Si” the guide said in return.
Whether he was referring to the horse’s leg or my riding ability wasn’t clear.
Either way, he felt compelled to swap mounts, something that was warmly and mutually welcomed if my horse’s Lazarus-like recovery was any indication.
My second pony, a sleepy looking bay mare, proved to be a better fed and less cantankerous animal and we got along just fine. By the end of five-hour ride I cold even nudge her into a canter without feeling the urge to cling onto the saddle post with both hands, so perhaps genetic pre-dispositions can be overcome.
Having previously dismissed as expensive folly any form of non-work-related equine activity that doesn’t involve the placement of a wager, I am now pleased to announce that horse riding is, wait for it… okay. Subsequently, I will remove trail-riding, three day evening and even pony-clubbing (and by pony-clubbing I am not referring to the activity of clubbing ponies, which I neither condone nor encourage) from my list of things to ridicule.
For me, a day in the saddle of a bicycle still beats a day in the saddle on a horse, but not by as much as previously projected and I can now say that I understand why little girls love their ponies. That said, Alan’s love for the equine species is still something of a mystery but the kid’s certainly got chops when it comes to riding horses. He’d only been on a horse once before but that didn’t stop him spending the day acting like Breaker Morant (minus the priest shooting obviously). The bloke’s a natural to the point where if the Village People eventually reform, he’s a walk-up start to be the cowboy.
Actually, speaking of cowboys, perhaps Alan’s equine management skills are not such a mystery given his enthusiasm for six-guns blazing, shoot-em-up Westerns. You can’t be brought up on a diet of Eastwood and Wayne without picking up a few tips on how to handle a horse.
A few weeks ago, back in Puerto Madryn, we were discussing our favourite films and bonded over a shared nostalgia for the Gary Cooper classic, High Noon. It’s obviously slightly perverse that a film made in 1952 should be a point of common interest between two people born roughly thirty years after it was released, but from such patches the fabric of childhood is constructed.
It was a disposable conversation and aside from the fact I couldn’t shift the film’s theme tune from my head I didn’t think much more of it until a few days later when wandering the isles of the Puerto Madryn supermarket on the hunt for snacks. I was evaluating the respective merits of chocolate chip cookies as opposed to Pringles when, to my general surprise and delight, I found myself in front of the DVD rack, fixed in the strong and silent gaze of Gary Cooper.
I grabbed the DVD and ran to Alan. He too was delighted, but being a sound head on steady shoulders he resisted the temptation. A backpacker, he reasoned, shouldn’t waste cash and valuable luggage-space on impulse DVD purchases, even if the DVD in question was slender and retailing for less than £5. High Noon could wait until the return to London.
But some itches cannot be satisfied with the promise of future scratches and, in less than 24 hours, Alan had invented a pretext to return to the supermarket to claim the DVD. Sadly, High Noon is a classic. And classics, like the forward motion of time itself, do not wait on man. On his return, the DVD was gone.
What followed was two days of self-flagellation and despair. “I should have bought it when I had the chance” he’d say as a pod of sealions playfully swept beneath his sea-kayak. “It won four Oscars in ‘52” he’d mope as another meal of exquisitely prepared seafood was laid before him. “Maybe I can get the deluxe edition when I get back to London. It comes in a gold-trim case and features a separate audio CD containing the film soundtrack” he’d gush optimistically while repairing yet another mechanical failure on his bike. He’d absentmindedly hum the theme tune while walking down the street. A man in a broad brimmed hat would walk past and he’d instinctively make finger-pistols with his hands. The preoccupation was rapidly becoming an obsession.
Three days after the first discovery of the now absent DVD and we were back in the supermarket. Superficially we were there to buy a new set of flip-flops but we both knew the real reason for our return. We would leave Puerto Madryn the next day. This was our last chance to secure High Noon.
Excited by the possibility that it might be there but too scared to check in case we merely confirmed its absence, we avoided the DVD aisle. Alan looked at the toothbrushes. I selected an apple. Alan looked at the hand towels. I compared the price of cookware. After forty minutes of procrastination I’d had enough. I simply had to know. I walked to the aisle I now knew so well and, with my eyes closed in insulation against thwarted expectation, I arranged myself in front of the rack. My breathing was shallow and my heartbeat rapid as I slowly opened my eyes. The glare of the neon strip-lights momentarily blinded me. As my retinas adjusted to the light I thought for a second they were playing tricks on me. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t possibly be.
It was.
There, just where it had been three days before when I first laid eyes on it, sat High Noon. I grabbed the cover, lifted it high above my head, and ran to where Alan stood comparing brands of dental floss in the personal hygiene aisle.
He let out a cry as I came near. “You’re kidding!” he said.
But I wasn’t.
Thirty-six pesos later it was ours. Unforsaken and unmistakable ours.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
The ability to back a horse up is apparently a difficult skill to acquire but unfortunately for the old boy it isn’t so highly prized when not allied to a similar deftness in making the horse operate in the forward gear settings.
I relate this tale not to show Dad up but to demonstrate that horsemanship is not something that runs in the Atkinson bloodlines. This is perhaps unsurprising considering that we descend from Irish peasants, whose experience of equine stock was probably limited to the occasional trampling beneath the hooves of the squire’s horse.
Sadly, on yesterday’s evidence it would seem that genetic inheritance goes beyond the mere transference of physical traits and, along with my slightly ginger hair and slender physique, I appear to have acquired my father’s ability to instruct a mount to completely ignore my instructions and do whatever the hell it likes, something I thoroughly demonstrated through my ability to get the horse to munch on grass and bite my foot.
Despite my best efforts to make my bloody animal behave in the same predictable and civilized manner as everyone else’s, my pony just wouldn’t be told. That I didn’t know what to tell it was possibly a contributing factor but it came as no surprise when, thirty minutes into the ride, the gelding stumbling twice and developed a heavy stoop over the left forelock. We clearly weren’t getting along.
I drew this to the attention of the guide who studied Moro’s gait for a second before motioning for me to pull up and dismount.
“Lame?” I said.
“Si” the guide said in return.
Whether he was referring to the horse’s leg or my riding ability wasn’t clear.
Either way, he felt compelled to swap mounts, something that was warmly and mutually welcomed if my horse’s Lazarus-like recovery was any indication.
My second pony, a sleepy looking bay mare, proved to be a better fed and less cantankerous animal and we got along just fine. By the end of five-hour ride I cold even nudge her into a canter without feeling the urge to cling onto the saddle post with both hands, so perhaps genetic pre-dispositions can be overcome.
Having previously dismissed as expensive folly any form of non-work-related equine activity that doesn’t involve the placement of a wager, I am now pleased to announce that horse riding is, wait for it… okay. Subsequently, I will remove trail-riding, three day evening and even pony-clubbing (and by pony-clubbing I am not referring to the activity of clubbing ponies, which I neither condone nor encourage) from my list of things to ridicule.
For me, a day in the saddle of a bicycle still beats a day in the saddle on a horse, but not by as much as previously projected and I can now say that I understand why little girls love their ponies. That said, Alan’s love for the equine species is still something of a mystery but the kid’s certainly got chops when it comes to riding horses. He’d only been on a horse once before but that didn’t stop him spending the day acting like Breaker Morant (minus the priest shooting obviously). The bloke’s a natural to the point where if the Village People eventually reform, he’s a walk-up start to be the cowboy.
Actually, speaking of cowboys, perhaps Alan’s equine management skills are not such a mystery given his enthusiasm for six-guns blazing, shoot-em-up Westerns. You can’t be brought up on a diet of Eastwood and Wayne without picking up a few tips on how to handle a horse.
A few weeks ago, back in Puerto Madryn, we were discussing our favourite films and bonded over a shared nostalgia for the Gary Cooper classic, High Noon. It’s obviously slightly perverse that a film made in 1952 should be a point of common interest between two people born roughly thirty years after it was released, but from such patches the fabric of childhood is constructed.
It was a disposable conversation and aside from the fact I couldn’t shift the film’s theme tune from my head I didn’t think much more of it until a few days later when wandering the isles of the Puerto Madryn supermarket on the hunt for snacks. I was evaluating the respective merits of chocolate chip cookies as opposed to Pringles when, to my general surprise and delight, I found myself in front of the DVD rack, fixed in the strong and silent gaze of Gary Cooper.
I grabbed the DVD and ran to Alan. He too was delighted, but being a sound head on steady shoulders he resisted the temptation. A backpacker, he reasoned, shouldn’t waste cash and valuable luggage-space on impulse DVD purchases, even if the DVD in question was slender and retailing for less than £5. High Noon could wait until the return to London.
But some itches cannot be satisfied with the promise of future scratches and, in less than 24 hours, Alan had invented a pretext to return to the supermarket to claim the DVD. Sadly, High Noon is a classic. And classics, like the forward motion of time itself, do not wait on man. On his return, the DVD was gone.
What followed was two days of self-flagellation and despair. “I should have bought it when I had the chance” he’d say as a pod of sealions playfully swept beneath his sea-kayak. “It won four Oscars in ‘52” he’d mope as another meal of exquisitely prepared seafood was laid before him. “Maybe I can get the deluxe edition when I get back to London. It comes in a gold-trim case and features a separate audio CD containing the film soundtrack” he’d gush optimistically while repairing yet another mechanical failure on his bike. He’d absentmindedly hum the theme tune while walking down the street. A man in a broad brimmed hat would walk past and he’d instinctively make finger-pistols with his hands. The preoccupation was rapidly becoming an obsession.
Three days after the first discovery of the now absent DVD and we were back in the supermarket. Superficially we were there to buy a new set of flip-flops but we both knew the real reason for our return. We would leave Puerto Madryn the next day. This was our last chance to secure High Noon.
Excited by the possibility that it might be there but too scared to check in case we merely confirmed its absence, we avoided the DVD aisle. Alan looked at the toothbrushes. I selected an apple. Alan looked at the hand towels. I compared the price of cookware. After forty minutes of procrastination I’d had enough. I simply had to know. I walked to the aisle I now knew so well and, with my eyes closed in insulation against thwarted expectation, I arranged myself in front of the rack. My breathing was shallow and my heartbeat rapid as I slowly opened my eyes. The glare of the neon strip-lights momentarily blinded me. As my retinas adjusted to the light I thought for a second they were playing tricks on me. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t possibly be.
It was.
There, just where it had been three days before when I first laid eyes on it, sat High Noon. I grabbed the cover, lifted it high above my head, and ran to where Alan stood comparing brands of dental floss in the personal hygiene aisle.
He let out a cry as I came near. “You’re kidding!” he said.
But I wasn’t.
Thirty-six pesos later it was ours. Unforsaken and unmistakable ours.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
Thursday, 4 March 2010
BABY GOT BACK
You haven’t lived until you’ve sung Hey Jude to a room full of bemused Bolivians. At least that’s how it feels to me on this sunny Thursday, which is now classified as “free time” thanks to a nationwide road blockade that has seen all public transportation parked up on the highways and byways in protest against a new road tax that either has been or is being introduced. I haven’t taken the time to find out which. Just to grumble about the result.
We were planning to head to the high-plane saltflats around Uyuni today on a four-day jeep trip. But thanks to the strike we can’t get out of town for at least another 24 hours, so here I am, sitting by the pool, scribbling up my notes from the last two weeks of South American adventuring. As frustrations go it’s probably at the lighter end of the scale. After all, they have a table-tennis table, and any day you get to whack something with a ping-pong paddle isn’t wasted.
A couple of my travelling companions are actually grateful for the delay after a night drinking the appropriately named Hobo Whiskey. From what I could see this morning this Argentine firewater more than lives up to its name. Certainly the glazed look in Alan’s eyes and the time-lapse nature of our breakfast conversation point to a distillation capable of delivering all the effects of long-term homelessness in the safety and comfort of your own home.
Not that last night’s revellers would actually be homeless for long considering the consistently excellent quality of musical execution at the Tupiza Karaoke Bar and Discothèque. The locals would have been more than happy to see gringo boots left under Boliviano beds, particularly Alan’s size 11s after he dazzled the assembled crowd of mid-week drinkers with a full-throated rendition of Mumbo No 5. In Spanish.
Now I’ve been travelling with Alan for five weeks and while I don’t wish to cast stones from my own casa-el-glasso, Spanish is not a language he has fully mastered in that time. In fact, the only complete sentences I think I’ve head him utter in Spanish have related to the ordering of beverages and the requesting of bills.
So it came as some surprise when he stepped to the mike and delivered an absolutely flawless performance. Simon Cowell would have been on his feet. Danni Minogue would have cried and then, live on national television, asked him back to hers for a nightcap. It was nothing short of unbelievable. Of course, I was slightly intoxicated myself at the time so I can’t discount the fact that I may be overplaying the fluency of his delivery. But the one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that he sure as hell wasn’t singing in English. .
With the ice now broken and thawing to an extent that would require Non Government Organisations to intervene on behalf of low-lying nations all over the world, I made my way to the microphone to teach this small part of the world to sing. While the achievement of perfect harmony remains an elusive dream, I like to think my rendition of Hey Jude at least brought people closer together, particularly the sing-along end section which was delivered with splendid enthusiasm, if not precision, by several drunk gentlemen in the front row. Thanks Jugo and friends.
I retired to my seat, content that I’d probably just achieved the high point of everyone’s evening – if not year – only to have the glow of my fame-spotlight completely extinguished by Trina, who threw down a stunning rendition of Living Next Door to Alice, which conclusively proved that the good people of Bolivia are as equally perplexed as to the identity of the song’s subject as the rest of the world.
A high watermark had been achieved and, for all money, it looked like it couldn’t be bettered. Stepping up to the mike after that would be like following Vegas Elvis onto stage moments after he’d wiped off the sweat and thrown his towel into the crowd after bringing the full 15-minute encore version of Suspicious Minds to a thunderous close.
I for one was of the opinion that betters could not be bested on this occasion and looked on in pity as Kat took the mike. Little did I know that in five short minutes the crowd would have well and truly forgotten Trina (Trina? Who the f*ck is Trina?), with a new hero taking her place.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a tall blonde Australian woman stand in front of a room full of Bolivians and, without the aid of a backing track or lyric sheet, deliver a word perfect rendition of Bustarhym’s “I Like Big Butts”. But let me tell you, until you have, you haven’t experienced even a fraction of what life has to offer.
There are Bolivian men today who, having reached the pinnacle of their worldly existence, are right now making appointments with their lawyers and priests to settle up their affairs. Like Alexander of Macedon, who shed salt tears after conquering the known world because, for him, there were no more worlds left to conquer, they are destined to live the rest of their lives as broken, aimless men. But at least they’ll always have Tupiza.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
We were planning to head to the high-plane saltflats around Uyuni today on a four-day jeep trip. But thanks to the strike we can’t get out of town for at least another 24 hours, so here I am, sitting by the pool, scribbling up my notes from the last two weeks of South American adventuring. As frustrations go it’s probably at the lighter end of the scale. After all, they have a table-tennis table, and any day you get to whack something with a ping-pong paddle isn’t wasted.
A couple of my travelling companions are actually grateful for the delay after a night drinking the appropriately named Hobo Whiskey. From what I could see this morning this Argentine firewater more than lives up to its name. Certainly the glazed look in Alan’s eyes and the time-lapse nature of our breakfast conversation point to a distillation capable of delivering all the effects of long-term homelessness in the safety and comfort of your own home.
Not that last night’s revellers would actually be homeless for long considering the consistently excellent quality of musical execution at the Tupiza Karaoke Bar and Discothèque. The locals would have been more than happy to see gringo boots left under Boliviano beds, particularly Alan’s size 11s after he dazzled the assembled crowd of mid-week drinkers with a full-throated rendition of Mumbo No 5. In Spanish.
Now I’ve been travelling with Alan for five weeks and while I don’t wish to cast stones from my own casa-el-glasso, Spanish is not a language he has fully mastered in that time. In fact, the only complete sentences I think I’ve head him utter in Spanish have related to the ordering of beverages and the requesting of bills.
So it came as some surprise when he stepped to the mike and delivered an absolutely flawless performance. Simon Cowell would have been on his feet. Danni Minogue would have cried and then, live on national television, asked him back to hers for a nightcap. It was nothing short of unbelievable. Of course, I was slightly intoxicated myself at the time so I can’t discount the fact that I may be overplaying the fluency of his delivery. But the one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that he sure as hell wasn’t singing in English. .
With the ice now broken and thawing to an extent that would require Non Government Organisations to intervene on behalf of low-lying nations all over the world, I made my way to the microphone to teach this small part of the world to sing. While the achievement of perfect harmony remains an elusive dream, I like to think my rendition of Hey Jude at least brought people closer together, particularly the sing-along end section which was delivered with splendid enthusiasm, if not precision, by several drunk gentlemen in the front row. Thanks Jugo and friends.
I retired to my seat, content that I’d probably just achieved the high point of everyone’s evening – if not year – only to have the glow of my fame-spotlight completely extinguished by Trina, who threw down a stunning rendition of Living Next Door to Alice, which conclusively proved that the good people of Bolivia are as equally perplexed as to the identity of the song’s subject as the rest of the world.
A high watermark had been achieved and, for all money, it looked like it couldn’t be bettered. Stepping up to the mike after that would be like following Vegas Elvis onto stage moments after he’d wiped off the sweat and thrown his towel into the crowd after bringing the full 15-minute encore version of Suspicious Minds to a thunderous close.
I for one was of the opinion that betters could not be bested on this occasion and looked on in pity as Kat took the mike. Little did I know that in five short minutes the crowd would have well and truly forgotten Trina (Trina? Who the f*ck is Trina?), with a new hero taking her place.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a tall blonde Australian woman stand in front of a room full of Bolivians and, without the aid of a backing track or lyric sheet, deliver a word perfect rendition of Bustarhym’s “I Like Big Butts”. But let me tell you, until you have, you haven’t experienced even a fraction of what life has to offer.
There are Bolivian men today who, having reached the pinnacle of their worldly existence, are right now making appointments with their lawyers and priests to settle up their affairs. Like Alexander of Macedon, who shed salt tears after conquering the known world because, for him, there were no more worlds left to conquer, they are destined to live the rest of their lives as broken, aimless men. But at least they’ll always have Tupiza.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
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