The man was unshaven, scruffily dressed and the large bulge in his back pocket was unmistakably a handgun. He was asking in Spanish for our passports – we had just cunningly concealed them under the mattress. The hotel room contained nothing more than a bed really, but it had seemed a good idea at the time. A lanky American with a smallish monkey perched on his shoulder strolled down the spacious corridor past the three of us: “You’d better give them to him” he drawled, “he’s the chief of police”.
The day had started well. We arrived at the Brazilian border town of Guajará-Mirim after a fabulous journey through the Amazon basin for a few weeks. The first week took us on a local river boat halfway along the Amazon from Belem at the mouth over 1,500 kilometres upstream to ex rubber boom-town Manaus. The river boat was the type where you sling your hammock on the deck and line up at the cookhouse door for meals. Each meal allocation was checked off on the boat ticket in case of greediness. The likelihood I would go back for seconds was zero; I unfailingly passed my meal on to one of the only two other gringos on the boat, it was so inedible.
Drinking water was pulled from the river in the wash of the boat, more or less in line with the toilet outflow (outflow being a generous description of the sanitary arrangements for third class deck travellers). The river water was transferred into a large clay pot, but after a few days we discovered the filter had been removed – it made it too slow for water to drip through. A much smaller river boat took us southwards for another 5 days on the Rio Madeira, the longest tributary of the Amazon, into Porto Velho. From there, it was just a hop and a skip to the Brazil/Bolivian border, which was yet another river, Rio Mamore.
For the princely equivalent of 20 cents, we piled into a putt-putt canoe. A combination of the small motor and the racing current took us from Brazil to Bolivia and the small town of Guayara Merin. The only transport in and out of this town was by river and apparently rare flights where the pushiest who got to the head of the crush at the ticket “office” got a ticket on the next flight. No roads in or out of town.
The motorbike taxi lads balanced our packs in front, we got on our respective pillions and roared off from the riverbank into town and to our surprisingly pleasant hotel. So, this is where, under pressure, we had no alternative but to retrieve the passports.
Multiple enquiries along the route for a month or more had each time assured us Australians did not need a visa for Bolivia. Was it one of those Austria/Australia things? The situation felt more than a little sticky when, after inspecting our passports, the gangster like policeman triumphantly advised us that indeed we did need visas. Maybe the look on our faces softened him quickly, but as we later discovered, he also enjoyed the power he had in this town. He transformed into a magnanimous benefactor who suddenly spoke excellent English. He would fix it, he told us.
After much important stamping of documents and signing of forms we became best friends for the 10 days we were there waiting for a plane out of this “wild west” town in the furthest reaches of Bolivia. He even invited us for lunch to celebrate a birthday. Very pleasant, and the reason the American farmer from further along the river had been invited as well (sans monkey) was revealed when he was the one who was left to foot the lunch bill.
Bolivian Airways was memorable too. The fuselage was unlined so we sat observing the frame holding us all in place enjoying our half cup of cordial en route from Guayara Merin to Trinidad. As we gratefully left the plane at Trinidad airport, the sight of all the grass caught in the landing gear as it had skittered down the runway was another graphic memory that has never left me.
Over 40 years later when I next crossed the border into Bolivia, I documented my legal entry for posterity. That crossing was much more orthodox, though it did involve literally walking from the Peruvian side over to Bolivia.
Twenty cents had been a pretty cheap price to pay to go from one country to another in border crossing transportation, but there was an even cheaper one in store a couple of years further along in our travels. There are always surprises along the road, especially in pre-internet days.
One memorable surprise that ended well occurred during a long bus journey in far northern Finland. The bus pulled up in the evening at quite a nice hotel totally in the middle of nowhere; not another dwelling or person to be seen. The surprise was that, while we thought this was yet another overnight bus trip, everyone else on the bus was booked into the hotel for the night. The kindly staff took pity on the forlorn Aussie girls and allowed us to spend the night in quite comfy armchairs in the hotel lobby.
This particular border crossing surprise however, was that the bus we thought we were taking from Greece into Turkey did not in fact take us over the border, much less into Turkey. It was cold and wet and walking seemed to be the only option when we got off the bus at the end of the line on the Greek side of the border. Not a solitary soul or vehicle anywhere on the horizon. Again, we were saved by the kindness of a stranger. On this occasion, a farmer on a tractor allowed us to sit in a trailer he was pulling ever so slowly into the first Turkish town across the border. Rain drizzled down all the way but, we had arrived safely and in daylight, for the start of the Turkey leg of the journey.
Probably the most spectacular border crossing memory occurred heading out of Ecuador north to Colombia. Again, the bus did not actually cross the border, however this situation was so much more civilised in that taxis did the border run. The deal is for four passengers plus luggage to pile into a medium sized sedan, pay the driver and off we go. Not sure what it is about cockerels in Ecuador, but we had already sat on the street in Quito waiting for the bus with a fellow travelling companion and her feathered friend.
Her young fowl however, was but a chick compared to the majestic bird the front seat passenger in our taxi was holding on his lap. We two were crammed in the back seat with a third local, all of us pinned in soundly by luggage that did not fit in the boot. The taxi driver finally deemed it was time to depart and began to manoeuvre gradually out of the parking area jammed with taxis and travellers. This was obviously the moment for rooster man to complete his final travel preparations. He engaged in a very generous throat clearing and a gathering together of the produce of this exercise. The moment was completed by an enormous expulsion out the taxi window. Sadly, the window was closed. No-one said a word as we all watched the voluminous expectoration make its way down the inside of the window. The man and his cockerel looked straight ahead. The gringas in the back seat struggled to maintain decorum to preserve what little dignity rooster man had left while their bellies shook with suppressed laughter that threatened to explode uncontrollably.
Lorna On The Loose 