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Well a couple of days ago i was reading in The Economist about the gasoline shortage in Bolivia. According to The Economist, President Morles came to office with an agenda to assist the poor people of Bolivia. One of the major items on the agenda was to nationalize the gas and oil industry and true to form one of the first orders of business, Morles carried through on his promise. However, the nationalization of this industry has created some considerable short falls in supply.
In addition to the nationalization of the industry, the Bolivian government provides 100 million dollars worth of subsidies to further assist Bolivia's poor. This has set the price of oil and gas far below Bolivia's neighbors and created a huge black market for smuggling into nearby countries.
As a result of these noble but misguided policies, Bolivia is suffering gasoline shortages dur to shortages in supply and the smuggling to nearby countries. All over the country major protest have sprung up as farmers are losing loads of money because they can not bring the crops to market and other industries are suffering from the massive waiting lines.
This seems like just another problem that you read about in the paper and sure enough, i merely read over it even though i knew i would be in the country shortly. Well yesterday i felt the effects of this shortage.
Keeping the story as short as possible, while is was in Cusco a two days ago i came down with a very very bad case of food poisoning. I was up all night next to the toilet feeling extremely miserable and unable to sleep. Well being short on time, i needed to get to Bolivia as fast as possible so i took the relatively short 10 overnight bus to Lake Titicaca. Unlike i was told by the bus company (b******s! who i am writing a letter to the company), the bus was not direct to Lake Titicaca. Instead, i had to change over to several different collectivos, which is usually not a problem but i was feeling extremely sick with no energy. Well i finally got to the Peru-Bolivian, which by the way was pretty calm compared to some that i have seen. Well at the boarder, i was informed that there were no taxi on this day because of a massive protest due to the gasoline shortages. Thinking surely that i could pay a little extra because face it i am a gringo, i proceeded to try and bribe local taxi drivers who were sitting outside their cars. Finally, with the collective bargaining power of a few other locals, 10 of us jammed into a small wagon type taxi ( with my bag on top with no ropes holding it down, was not feeling thrilled about that).
About 2 minutes into the journey a blockage of taxi stood in the way and would not allow anyone to pass. That is when i knew i was screwed. We were in the middle of now where, no taxi or other modes of transportation were anywhere (unless i wanted to sattle up a nearby sheep), the sun was blistering down with no shade, and i was at 10,000 feet or more looking at a two hour hike into town with over 60 pounds of cargo (mostly uphill also). So i began my two hour hike with no energy, no food, no water, no toilet paper, no shade, no ipod battery, barely any air, and a bad attitude.
All the way i was thinking about how sometimes events in the newspaper actually take place in the real world. Well, thats traveling....
Evan Terry
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