Cholas in Bowlers: Journey to Bolivia by Jane Mundy

Author:Jane Mundy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel/South America
ISBN: Cholas in Bowlers
Publisher: Exisle Publishing
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE REAL McCOY?

A strange thing is starting to happen. I’ve felt it coming on for a while now and just lately it’s picked up pace. There’s no point in pretending it’s not there, I might as well just come out and admit it.

All the warning signs were there. First there was the thing about tourists in the plaza. When I first arrived in Sucre, spotting anyone else who looked new and lost like me was like discovering another Earthling on Mars. Exchanging looks with one of these Earthlings was a kind of code between members of a secret club, a recognition that they and me were ‘us’ and that others out there were ‘them’. But now when I see a virginal young tourist skipping into the plaza for what is obviously their first time, it’s different. I no longer try to catch their eye. I don’t feel drawn to them as to a fellow alien.

‘Look at those tourists,’ I say to Graham in a disparaging kind of voice, as though I’m referring to an inferior species. ‘They look so new. Surely we never looked like that, did we?’ I have elevated myself to a superior stratum of humanity.

Then there was the bible. Once the indispensable companion to any tentative venture outside our front door, we now never leave home with it. No one with any self-respect would be caught dead with a Lonely Planet in their hands. Tourists in the plaza have Lonely Planets, not us. I happily take myself off to the market or to the park at the other end of town unencumbered, confident that I will arrive at my destination without getting lost or being accosted. When one day one of the bright-green tourists asks me for directions to the Museo de la Recoleta, I’m flattered. I must have the cocksure air of someone who’s been round here for a while.

Another thing that’s happened is that the extraordinary has started to become commonplace. Our eyes no long stand out on stalks when we see a demonstration in the plaza or a beggar family in the doorway or an indigenous woman sailing past us along the footpath with her baby slung in a rainbow shawl across her back. It’s not that we have started to take things for granted. Everything is just as fascinating and captivating as it always was—it’s just that it is no longer new.

What’s happening is we’re no longer just a couple of Aussies struggling to master the basics of the Spanish language and clinging to the periphery of Bolivian life by our fingernails. We’re becoming locals!

But as smug as it feels to no longer be a tourist, sometimes there are things for which you have to pretend to be a tourist in order to do. One of these is getting to see how country people live. Short of having your own car or knowing someone who knows someone, it’s just about impossible to come to any sort of understanding of this other side of Bolivian society without signing up for a guided tour.

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