Thursday, August 21

Location: Manaus, Brazil

Today's weather: 27°C.

Today was a very long day. Most of it was spent waiting around in Bolivian airport terminals. I don't know if there really is a hell, but if there is, I now imagine that it's a lot like a Bolivian airport terminal – the mindnumbing boredom as result of waiting in a place with nothing to do more than equals the torment of fire and brimstone. Then just add in a mild case of diahorrea, and you have the perfect punishment. I guess you can tell from this introduction that today wasn't one of my best days.

Today started off at 5am. I got dressed, grabbed my bag and caught a taxi out to the airport. I am constantly amazed at how cheap things are in Peru – the taxi trip to the airport cost me 7 soles or about $NZ 4. By comparison, my taxi trip at the end of the day, from Manaus airport into the city cost R$28, which is equivalent to $NZ 40!. It took a couple of hours waiting around at the airport for my check-in and boarding – but, soon enough, I was on a plane headed to La Paz in Bolivia. This flight took 45 minutes. We crossed back over rich blue waters of Lake Titicaca and past several snow-capped mountains jutting out from the otherwise flat landscape of the altiplano.

The flight was okay, but I was feeling sick and not in a good mood – and I spent my time fnding fault with the airline. AeroPeru fits the stereotype of a South American airline – its planes are a little older than most, and it seems as if they've packed in as many seats and any many people as they possibly can. The air stewardess went through the emergency procedure instructions, but looked as unenthusiastic as she possibly could – she waved her arms about in a few token gestures. Figuring that no one was really very interested, she gave up part way through and slipped back behind the curtains into the business class cabin.

Flying into La Paz is quite spectacular. The city is on a plain and, with the exception of Lake Titicaca, is surrounded by snow-capped mountain peaks. I had to spend most of the day in La Paz since my plane arrived at 9am, and my next flight wasn't until 8:15 in the evening. La Paz airport is bare and has very few facilities – it's essentially just a big hall with white painted walls and cold marble floor. Not the best place to be spending one's day. There were a few tiny souvenir shops, a handful of other travellers, and a woman seated nearby loudly rattling a cup for change whenever anyone walked by.

I changed some money at the airport exchange counter, then took a taxi ($US 7) into the city. I planned to pass the time looking through the shops, in cafes, and perhaps see a film at the local cinema.

My first impression of the city was that it was very brown. The same brown dirt which covers the altiplano is used to make the mud bricks used for the houses. The houses are mostly simple single story dwellings, surrounded by a fence made of the same brown mud bricks. The overall effect is bleak and depressing.

There were lots of billboards along the roadside advertising cars and other products. One of the things that I notice most when visiting any country is cars. The billboards advertising Toyota cars had them renamed as "Toyosa", though I wasn't sure why. Mitsubishi Pajero four-wheel drives were known locally as a Mitsubishi Montero (someone once told me that Pajero is an rude word in Spanish). And I went past car showrooms selling brand new Volkswagen Beetles. The streets were full of beaten up old Dodge buses and Japanese vans in which there was always someone in the doorway yelling out the scheduled sequence of stops.

My morning was spent walking through the streets of the city. None of it was very exciting – the food in the cafes looked unappetising, the central city was run down and unappealing, and the cinemas were closed until the late afternoon. I wandered aimlessly, pausing every now and then to search desperately for a toilet as a result of my illness. It wasn't a happy situation, and my mood got worse as the day progressed. The only thing which made me feel happy was discovering that La Paz's time was an hour ahead of Cuzco – and realising that I had one less hour to spend there!

Maybe I would have enjoyed the city more if I'd been feeling better. There were a few interesting markets and stalls – some selling local handicrafts and food, and one selling colourful Amazon birds in cages. Things were generally very cheap (compared to Brazil). In one shop I saw a CD-ROM containing a multimedia history of Amazônia. It looked very good (and also very cheap, at $35) so I bought a copy.

Within just a few hours I felt bored and uncomfortable. At 1pm I caught a taxi back to the airport. As we approached the airport, I noticed lots of old planes parked in a field close to the terminal. They were propeller-driven airliners dating from the 1940s and 50s – DC-4s and Convairs. I've never seen this type of plane before – just in books and old movies. Perhaps airplanes too old for use elsewhere somehow end up in Bolivia. I took a few photographs but wasn't able to get a close view.

Things at the airport were the same as when I'd left. The terminal was still empty, bleak – and the woman was still seated, rattling her cup for change. The next few hours were awful. I felt terrible. I tried passing time by taking my computer out of my luggage, playing with the new CD-ROM which I'd bought in town, and even trying to write for a while. But feeling sick as I was, it was very difficult and I gave up after an hour. The rest of the time was spent wandering around the terminal, watching the people around me, and wishing I was somewhere else.

The departure lounge doors finally opened at 7:30pm, much to my relief. But, there were a whole lot of narcotics police just inside the doorway. They stopped me, searched through my luggage, then took me aside to brush me down and ensure that I was wasn't carrying anything I shouldn't. All the other passengers had to go through the same process. I'm not sure why the police were so vigorous – but I guessed that it had something to do with the fact that most of the passengers on the plane were heading onto Miami in the United States. I passed the check without any problems – and since I didn't see anyone being led away, I guess everyone else did too. At least the officers were friendly and they took trouble not to mess up the clothes in my backpack.

The next stage of my travel involved a Lloyd AeroBoliviano flight to the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, where I would catch another plane to Manaus.

The flight to Santa Cruz took an hour. The plane slowly taxied towards the terminal when we arrived – but there was a very puzzling sight out the window when the plane finally stopped. Outside, there were lots of Bolivian army officials and other people in uniforms gathered in a semi-circle. They unrolled a red carpet towards a door at the front of the plane. The door opened, a band started to play, and there was a deluge of camera flashes and TV cameras as a man in a grey suit descended the steps onto the tarmac and walked into the centre of the crowd. I then watched as he said something into the TV cameras and inspected the army personnel standing in a line in front of him. The rest of us waiting in the plane had to wait several minutes for the commotion to die down, at which point a walkway was rolled up to the door so that we could walk straight into the terminal building, bypassing the crowd below us.

Our wait at Santa Cruz was supposed to last an hour, but an announcement was made just as we were getting ready to board – the plane would be delayed another two hours until 12:30am! I thought lots of very rude things about the airline, and swore never to fly Lloyd AeroBoliviano again. Although Santa Cruz's terminal was better than the one at La Paz, it was now very late at night, all the airport shops were closed, and none of the airport's drink machines worked! I was still feeling sick, and very grumpy.

Our plane finally boarded and took off at 1am, reaching Manaus a few hours later. The cabin attendant made an announcement in Spanish saying that Manaus-bound passengers could get off, while the rest of the passengers should stay seated (my Spanish isn't very good, so I didn't understand this). The English announcement said merely that all passenger should stay seated (very few people were getting off at Manaus anyway). As a result, the next half hour was spent sitting in my seat wondering what the delay was – and I only got off when I finally queried the stewardess, just as the Miami-bound passengers were boarding. The stewardess was very abrupt and unhelpful. This only strengthened my resolve never to fly Lloyd AeroBoliviano again in the future.

I caught a taxi from Manaus airport into the Central City, and finally arrived at Hotel Iguassu at 5:30am. I was barely being awake, and only realised an hour afterwards that I'd accidentally left my Brazil guidebook in the taxi. Not that I really cared – I just just very happy that my awful day of travelling was now behind me.