El Salvador

There is a line of thinking in Buddhist philosophy which says that the level of happiness or suffering at a given point of time is relative to the happiness or suffering that immediately preceded it. Needless to say I was overjoyed when I stepped off the plane in San Salvador.

This happiness was not just a factor of the gay & jaunty time I had in Bolivia, but also of the incredibly circuitous air route which was required to extract myself from Lapaz and plonk me down again in El Salvador in the one day. The only route possible from Lapaz is – Lapaz to Lima (Peru), Lima to Bogota (Columbia), Bogota to San Jose (Costa Rica), San Jose to San Salvador. So after leaving Lapaz around 6am I arrived in San Salvador around 9pm. Arriving in San Salvador, it felt like I hadn’t just spent 15 hours flying, but travelled about 200 years forward in time after Bolivia.

So stepping off the plane and going through customs I was in a kind of delirious yet happy state. Perfect timing for some last minute hi-jinx with a humourless customs official.

On the entry form I left the “Address in El Salvador” blank as I didn’t know which hotel I was staying at yet as I was being initially picked up by the promoters of the gig in San Salvador. Upon being quizzed about this by the official, I indicated that I didn’t know yet which hotel because my friend had booked it.

So he replied “Put Asterisk”. So I drew an Asterisk next to the Address section.

He then narrowed his eyes and looked at me like I was trying to be funny

“NO – Asterisk!”.

“That IS an asterisk!”

This went on for another minute until I finally realised he was trying to say “Address”, not “Asterisk”. Which meant he hadn’t understood a word of what I initially told him.

Thankfully he eventually gave up in frustration and let me through.

After collecting my luggage I was met by the promoter Ofo who introduced my to his friend and co-promoter Fernando.

Fernando motioned to a huge guy who was standing near the car to come over and get my luggage.

It was then that I noticed that this guy, along with the driver who was standing next to the vehicle, were holding massive pistols.

I then proceeded to have the simultaneous thoughts of “holy shit what have I got myself into”, followed immediately by “wow I have my own bodyguards”. Unfortunately neither carried me to the car Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston style and I had to walk myself.

However my bubble was soon burst when Ofo said “Sorry about the bodyguards, Fernando has to travel everywhere with them”. I was reliably informed that kidnapping for ransom is a reasonably common thing in El Salvador so maximum precaution is always required.

Over the next few days I never quite got used to sitting in that car next to the bodyguards, with their guns resting on their laps and further guns inserted conspicuously into the rear of the front seats.

El Salvador is really only known to most in the west due to the devastating civil war which raged from 1980 to 1992, between the Government and various Communist factions. Modern day San Salvador therefore came as a major shock to me. Driving around much of San Salvador, you could easily think you were in the USA somewhere, most likely in Florida due to the climate and strong Hispanic feel. This distinctly American feel to the city is, I am sure, often a point of great criticism, however after being in Bolivia for several weeks I found myself breathlessly exclaiming “THERE’S A KFC” or “My lord – DUNKIN DONUTS!”. I therefore ended up subsisting on a diet almost entirely provided by my good friends at Subway.

I was on Cloud 9 during most of my stay in El Salvador due to the subconscious comparisons my brain was making with Bolivia. When I checked into the hotel, I let out a girlish squeal when I noticed there was a coffee percolator in my room. My joy was further compounded by in-room internet and ice-cold airconditioning. Sitting in the aircon, sipping my coffee, reading emails – I wanted for nothing.

Over the next few days, as well as the usual radio interviews to promote the gig, I also had my auspicious debut on El Salvador TV. The host of the show was unforgettable – the campest person I have ever laid eyes on, as well as being the most in-judicious user of fake tan I have yet to come across. Imagine a kind of young Liberace, dunked in orange food dye. No, scratch that. This guy made Liberace seem like John Wayne.

The day of gig and the gig itself was all quite cruisy. I was taken to the venue for a sound-check while they were setting up. I can tell you it was quite surreal – they had roped the bodyguards into blowing up balloons for the decorations, so I was able to tick that mental box in my head of things to see before I die “130kg man blowing up balloon whilst packing serious heat – CHECK!”

I put on a track with a nice heavy kick drum to test out the sound system which was first class. One of the best soundsystems I have heard. Insanely over-spec’d for the size of the room. Imagine the sound system from an Alice Cooper concert squeezed into a room that can fit 1000 people max. Fernando was at the back blowing up balloons and it took all the willpower I could muster not to yell out “can you hear the drums Fernando?”. I am sure he gets it a lot.

The day after the gig was a trip I will not forget in a hurry. It was decided that myself, Fernando, Ofo and the other partner Abe, would spend some time at Fernando’s family holiday home on the edge of a lake up in the mountains. We arrived in the evening to a suitably fortress-like, palatial home on the edge of the water. At night I could make out vaguely some palm trees and water in the distance. Fernando asked me what time I would like to get up in the morning so I said around 8am.

My room was a self-contained bungalow down closer to the water from the main house. After such a long few days I crashed fairly early into lovely oblivion.

Bang on the dot of 8am there was a knock at my door and in walked a maid carrying a tray of freshly brewed coffee. She also rattled out some Spanish and I caught “desayuno” so I discerned that she was referring to breakfast.

So, coffee in hand, I stepped out of the bungalow and was greeted by one of the most breathtaking sites I have ever witnessed. You see, we were at a place called Lago (Lake) Coatapeque, which, as it turns out, is a lake situated in the blown out top of an ancient volcano. So there was water, surrounded by high hills, dotted with palatial mansions, as far as the eye can see.

On this particular estate, the house is set up quite high on the hill and then the property runs down to the water, punctuated by massive palm trees reaching up into the sky. At the water’s edge is a boathouse/jetty which would put many people’s primary residence to shame. The boathouse was suitably luxurious which hammocks crisscrossing, stylish coffee table setting with magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair and various aviation publications.

Parked lazily to the side of the boathouse was a Jetski and 2, yes 2, speedboats. Apparently one of the servants had been toiling since 6am on the Jetski, however he couldn’t get it to spring to life, so frolicking on the Jetski was ruled out for the day – a minor tragedy, as footage of me, shirtless & windswept on a Jetski, would have made for Youtube gold.

Both Fernando’s house and the surrounding houses were of the most remarkable opulence, with massive Spanish-era mansions nestled amongst verdant mountains. Throughout the day I saw several neighbours arrive and depart via helicopters from helipads on their front lawns. On the street I live in, in Perth, some of my neighbours consider having doors on their car as being a little ostentatious, so I spent the majority of the day with my jaw ajar.

So the rest of the day was spent in decadent fashion, lounging on floating beds in the lake and taking eye-poppingly fast rides on the speed boat. Despite much cajoling from the other guys I could not be persuaded to water-ski. Despite the fact that it was a lake, there was something spooky about the water that I couldn’t get past – when you looked down it was just pure black due to the depth – so my mind was conjuring some fanciful fresh water shark/crocodile hybrid creature that was going to come up and attack me. I was about to give in and actually go ahead with it but was saved by a sudden tropical shower which passed over the mountain, forcing everyone indoors.

Bolivia, October 2006 Part 2

Cochabamba (Population – 800,000)

I was due to DJ in the nearby city of Cochabamba the following Friday however, due to the fact that I wasn’t really acclimatising to Lapaz I asked if I could leave a few days earlier. I had just done an album deal and was eager to work on material for it, however in my malaise I wasn’t getting anything done.

So as not to belabour the point, I have skipped many adverse incidents between arriving in Lapaz and departing for the airport again, however suffice to say that Lapaz (and the rest of Bolivia it may be said) can only be described as chaos. This is no more apparent when you have the misfortune to be required to take a Taxi or in some way utilise a road in Lapaz. There do not appear to be any road rules in Lapaz, merely suggestions, which are more often than not ignored. From what I saw, I imagine that the test to get your drivers license in Lapaz involves being shown two pictures and correctly distinguishing a motor vehicle from a stick of celery. When I returned to Lapaz for a 1 night layover, the taxi driver was reaching improbable speeds downhill, resulting in Dukes of Hazzard-style jumps over speed bumps and my face was actually flattening as we were pulling at least 2 or 3 G’s.

Like I said, chaos. So it came as little surprise that my 8pm flight for Cochabamba eventually moseyed out of Lapaz at 11pm.

Cochabamba (literally Swamp Plain) is known as the Garden City due to its agreeable setting and climate. It claims to have the world’s best climate and based on my week there I would not disagree. The weather was amazing – warm days of around 28 degrees followed by cool breezy nights. Like Lapaz it is situated in a valley, surrounded by mountains – again this made for the most spectacular views from my hotel room.

From a sightseeing standpoint the only point of interest in Cochabamba with any real distinction is the 33 metre high Cristo de la Concordia – a massive statue of Jesus Christ which is perched upon a hill overlooking the city. This is actually the tallest of its kind in the world, eclipsing the better know version which overlooks Rio De Janeiro in Brasil. I asked a local DJ I met if it was possible to walk up to it – he indicated it would be around a 5 hour climb and I stood a not insignificant chance of being robbed by “mountain people”! I therefore, bravely decided that a brisk stroll and a nice cup of coffee would be more up my alley.

Cochabamba is still quite high in the mountains but nowhere near the altitude of Lapaz so when I awoke the following morning I felt fantastic and decided to go for a stroll. Presently I happened upon the curiously named “Colon Shopping Centre”. Expecting all manner of lower-intenstine-themed stores or perhaps some kind of massive Hypermarket featuring products relating to the latter stages of human digestion – but alas I was disappointed to find a mundane shopping centre featuring nothing more exotic than a café. After subsequently stumbling upon the Colon Hotel and the Colon Bank I guess that this general area must be named Colon. All these stores were surrounding a lovely grassed-park called, yes you guessed it, Colon Plaza. I sat down on a park bench and managed to become surprisingly sunburnt in around 15 minutes. While childishly giggling to myself about the name of the park I noticed that they had all the sprinklers running on the grassed areas – so I spent the next hour or so coming up with all manner of “colonic irrigation” jokes, to my fantastic personal amusement.

For the next few days I settled into a routine of awaking mid-morning, taking a stroll around the city before decamping at one of the cafés on the main strip for lunch. Afternoons were spent working on music before a follow up visit was made to said cafes for dinner. The leisurely hours spent at these cafes, watching the world go by, allowed me to make the following sweeping generalisations –

1. Bolivian women under 40, without exception, are shoe-horned into clothing 2 sizes too small.

2. In Bolivia (and from what I have seen, generally in South America), there are young, pretty women and really old crotchety women with makeup inspired by Tammy Bakker. Nothing in between. Its like they hit 40 and a

re required to turn up to City Hall and enter some kind of accelerated aging machine with the age set to “80”.

3. Young Bolivian men dress fairly similar to Australia or the USA, save for the penchant of men over 50 to suddenly start wearing checked shirts with the buttons undone to reveal a shock of manly chest hair.

A chance email with my friend Todd in Chicago had suddenly led to me checking out flights to Chicago from Mexico. I was due to Mexico in 10 days and suddenly thought it would be nice to spend a week or so in the USA. However this brought me face to face with my dreaded nemesis – USA Air Travel. Americans do most things better than other countries however this does not include air travel. Someone needs to write a whole book on it because it is such an enigma how airlines and airports in the US can be run so badly. I will save my cornucopia of hard luck tales from travelling in the US for another time, but suffice to say it sticks in my craw.

So I hopped on American Airlines website to book a flight, gulping every step of the way, ever curious about how they would get me this time. After spending about 20 minutes finding the right combination of flights I was almost at the end of the booking process when my laptop battery started to go. So I went to run up to my room to get my power cord only to find the elevator out of service, with my room on the 10^th floor. So I waited for around 30 minutes while they fixed the elevator, fetched my power cord & started the process again. This time the internet cut out about 10 minutes in. So I waited a while again until the internet was up and running again. I then got to the last page where you enter credit card information but in the billing address there was no option for Australia. After hunting around in the site FAQ , I found buried in the Credit Card section one line saying that only credit cards with US billing information could be used. However, also buried in this section was a paragraph indicating that if you didn’t have a credit card with a US address, you could reserve online, then pay in person at an American Airlines office, with only an extra $10 service fee payable. So the booking was made and I headed off to the nearest American Airlines office to pay.

When I arrived at the counter and informed the booking number to the lady she informed me that paying at the office would result in the fare doubling from US$600 to US$1200, despite what I told her it said on the internet. After she initially declined to look, I was able to force to bring up the website, where it clearly said the only extra payable was $10. She then got on the phone to the Lima office, followed by the office in Dallas. After 2 hours, yes 2 hours, she finally reached the conclusion that I couldn’t pay by credit card, but I could pay cash. As I was fumbling for enough cash to pay, she typed away some more and then announced that she couldn’t accept cash payment either. Her computer system wasn’t set up properly so she couldn’t accept any payment for a booking made on the internet, but if I wished I could make a booking there and pay the US$1200 fare.

Not knowing the correct Spanish lexicon for “Go get fucked”, I simply chose to widen my eyes at her and promptly departed. I am pretty much sure that if a photograph was taken of me as I left that office, there would be visible anger-squiggles radiating from my person. Fortunately, I was able to subsequently make the booking for the same price through blessed Expedia so all was not lost.

My next destination was San Salvador, El Salvador, which meant a flight back to Lapaz to stay overnight to catch the early morning flight out of Bolivia. I was concerned about a possible relapse of my altitude-related issues however strangely I felt fine this time when I arrived in Lapaz. I imagine that I had acclimatised to an extent in Cochabamba for the week, so my system was able to handle the extra 1000 metres.

Bolivia, October 2006 Part 1.

The Stark Cityscape of Lapaz, Bolivia

It can be fair to say that, for the majority of the world’s population, Bolivia remains a mystery - referred to rarely in popular culture and usually suffixed by “Marching Powder” when by happenstance, this country comes up in conversation. As with most people, my knowledge of this country was scant – so when I received an offer to DJ there as part of a South American tour, I blindly accepted. I was subsequently informed by several South American friends that it is unheard of for DJs to play in Bolivia. You see, even in South America, Bolivia appears to be viewed as a backwater, the Wild West.

However I remained undeterred and with my head swimming with grandiose words like “pioneer” and, perhaps optimistically “adventurer”, I set off on my tour of South America

After DJing in Adelaide & Sydney over the weekend, I boarded the flight from Sydney to Santiago, Chile, where I would have a one-night layover before catching the next morning’s flight to Lapaz, Bolivia. On my previous visit to South America, the LAN Chile flight to Santiago was full so I was forced to take the circuitous route of Perth-Sydney-Los Angeles-Lima-Buenos Aires which clocked in at a lazy 34 hours including stopovers. This time I was able to reach South America in the rather more humane period of 15 hours. Whilst following the on-board map on my headrest TV I noted with interest and muted alarm that we were directly over the tip of Antarctica – I assume this is how they make such good time on that flight, rather than going straight across the Pacific.

As the flight to Lapaz leaves before the flight from Sydney arrives, you are forced into a one-night layover in Santiago. It didn’t take long for Chilean customs to raise my ire. As you are about to clear customs there is a small sign informing residents of Australia, USA, Canada & Britain that Chile has a reciprocal “arrival tax” agreement with those countries and you are therefore requested to pay US$56. Now call me crazy but I am pretty darn sure that Chilean’s are not getting fleeced at Australian airports. Judging by the reactions of all the other poor souls forced to part with their hard-earned cash, I was not alone with my bulging eyes and incredulous look. Despite a split second plan to foment some kind of revolt amongst my fellow passengers, I meekly paid & cleared customs.

Lapaz (Population - 1 Million)

Lapaz (literally “The Peace”) was founded in 1548 by the Spanish, on the site of an existing Native American settlement. Confusingly, some resources list Lapaz as the capital of Bolivia and some indicate the nearby city of Sucre to be the capital – it appears that Sucre is the official capital and Lapaz the unofficial or de-facto capital.

I arrived in Lapaz around midday the next day after catching the only flight of the day which departs early in the morning from Santiago. Now, like most, I get nervous going through customs in any part of the world. Like most, its not due to fear of having my collection of Midget Porn unearthed by prying eyes, or an official discovering 10kg of a “mysterious white powder”. Clearing customs is just a nervy experience full stop. So it wasn’t unusual for me to feel short of breathe and for my heart to be beating rapidly as I cleared Bolivian customs. However, about 10 minutes out of customs I realised that I still felt the same and couldn’t work out why. Then it dawned on me – I remembered reading that Lapaz is the worlds highest capital city, with an altitude of 3600 metres (11,811 feet) above sea level . These must be symptoms of the dreaded Altitude Sickness.

Lapaz Airport is situated in the satellite city of El Alto, which believe it or not, is located on a mountain OVERLOOKING the already lofty Lapaz. So I got in a taxi and set off on the 30 minute journey to Lapaz.

It is without a shadow of a doubt that I declare the view of Lapaz from the mountains to be the most spectacular cityscape I have ever witnessed. When earth finally colonises Mars, this is what the cities will look like I am sure. If you remember those pictures of Mars which were beamed to Earth by NASA, add spectacular mountains to your mental picture and you will have something approximating the view of Lapaz. However Lapaz is a city to be viewed from afar. As you get closer to the city, breathtaking scenery gives way to breathtaking poverty. It is here you see first had how Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. If I’m forced to give out more mental imagery I would have to say that most parts of Lapaz appear lifted from Mad Max or some equivalent post-apocalyptic-style movie.

Due to the vagaries of gig scheduling, I was actually arriving a week early for my gig in Lapaz, so prior to my trip I asked the promoter if he could me a good value hotel to stay at, where I could work on music on my laptop. He indicated that he knew the manager of the Sucre Palace Hotel in downtown Lapaz and could get me a room for US$10 a night (usual cost US$30). For someone used to hocking various body parts to pay for 1 night in a UK hotel, this seemed too good to be true. Well, it was. After 1 hour at this hotel I had to physically restrain myself from stomping down to the front desk and asking where the other $9 went that I was paying. After putting my suitcase down in my room, I wearily flopped on the bed, only to almost dislocated most of my working vertebrae as I discovered to my understandable chagrin, that there was a wooden bar running horizontally across the bed, under the mattress. Normally this wouldn’t be much of an issue as the mattress would cushion the bar – however this mattress was unlike any I have ever seen – its thickness could only be expressed in microns. The bed was also designed for guests suffering from growth hormone deficiencies – I am not overly tall by any stretch yet I could almost bend my knees over the edge. The one thing I couldn’t get out of my head was that this bed passed some kind of product development and Quality Control system at the place where it was made – this seemed unbelievable to me. I could picture the QA Manager at the bed factory trying it out - “Ah yes, spine is at 90 degrees, no blood supply to the feet – Another unqualified success for Julio’s Bed Factory!”.

I noticed a button on the wall which I naturally pressed, only to be scared witless by something spluttering to life in the corner. My initial reaction was that it was a medieval torture device or some kind of bug zapper – but no! – it was a heater – and a recalcitrant one at that. Due to the noise that this contraption made I was forced, on a moment to moment basis to choose between heat or blessed silence.

I then decided to freshen up and have a shower. Big mistake.

To my growing horror, I realised after about 5 minutes of having the shower running that the water wasn’t getting any hotter. I furtively looked around the bathroom for a switch or button which would activate the hot water. I then noticed a small sign in Spanish and English. The English translation made not a lick of discernible sense (something like “rotate your warm rodent until you have teased urination from your faucet” or something equally ridiculous), so I resorted to translating the Spanish version using my Spanish Dictionary. Roughly translated it said “You must wait some time before the water becomes hot”. OK. So I decided to keep it running and read for 10 minutes while it heated up. Still nothing. Another 10 minutes – a little hotter possibly? I couldn’t tell – It could just be my imagination. Another 10 minutes – yes, definitely a small progression from freezing cold to rather cold. However my rising hopes were subsequently dashed as the water stubbornly decided to plateau at “rather cold”.

Adding to all this was my growing realisation that I must have altitude sickness. Like most people who become sick these days – my first stop – the Internet. I found a net café on the street outside the hotel and looked up Lapaz + Altitude Sickness in Google. Yes, I did indeed have all the symptoms – headache, malaise, no appetite, difficulty breathing, and what were quaintly described as “mild digestive complaints”. The article I read informed me that many people actually faint on the tarmac at Lapaz Airport. This made me feel like a little less of a pussy. Altitude sickness is very unpleasant. I can’t imagine what the people who climb Everest go through. Apparently when you get up as high as Lapaz, your body takes at least 3 days to acclimatise. Meanwhile, taking about 10 steps along the street had me gasping for air – and I am not exaggerating. So this understandably curtailed my activities and restricted me to about a 20 metre radius around my hotel.

The streets of Lapaz are full of beggars – almost exclusively made up of the Native Indigenous population. The female natives in Lapaz have the typically brightly coloured, hand woven shawls along with a curious oddity – they all wear British bowler hats. Apparently, this trend caught on seriously during an early visit by the British. It really is the most striking juxtaposition.

When you sit down to eat you are generally approached at least once every 2 or 3 minutes by an elderly native woman or a young boy asking for money. Like I imagine is the case in India, you really have to harden your heart while you are here. At first, I gave some change to two little boys however it had the opposite effect than I would have hoped. I found that once you gave them money they would harass you fairly aggressively for more. At the end of your meal, if you haven’t finished all your food, a frail old native woman would appear miraculously at your table with a silver bucket. I saw the table next to me scrape all their leftovers into her bucket so I did the same. It was a horrible feeling that someone could be reduced to begging for leftover scraps.

Seeing this kind of suffering should have given me solace later that night when I got progressively sicker but it didn’t.

By morning I felt a little better, so after getting out of bed and re-aligning my spine, I departed for the lobby to ask the whens and wheres pertaining to breakfast. I was informed the breakfast was between 7 and 10am, so, being 7.30am I went to the dining room for breakfast.

Laid before me was a sumptuous buffet of 1 basket of cheese crackers and an urn filled with some indeterminate fruit juice, perhaps made by a company specialising in homeopathic medicine – I estimated that one glass of this juice was made up of water and a conservative 5 or 10 juice molecules. I asked the lady working there if they had any bread and she replied something which I deciphered as “not yet”. So I decided to come back in an hour when they had finished setting up breakfast.

Well, it was worth the wait. I returned to find not only bread, but a toaster to boot. I felt like Caligula. As I slowly munched my way through a piece of toast (I still had no appetite to speak of), I noticed with interest that the lady was still setting up breakfast. Over the course of the next 30 minutes she managed to bring out a coffee urn and then in turn, some milk. When I left at around 9am, she was still setting up.

Over the course of the next 3 days I did barely more than eat a little and watch DVDs on my laptop. Anything more strenuous than that resulted in immediate headaches & nausea. I was thinking back to what I read on the Net about level of oxygen in Lapaz being some amazingly low percentage of sea level. I imagined that the lack of natural resources was probably behind Bolivia’s poverty, but I wondered to what extent the level of oxygen played any role. I made a mental note to research this point further but so far, I have not.

So to the night of the gig. It was at a club called “Hentai” and when I arrived it was packed with people. As I walked into the club I realised something I hadn’t thought of. In my already oxygen-deprived state, a smoke-filled club was the last place I should be. As I gasped and wheezed my way to the dj booth to put my gear down I noted with a wry smile that everyone I could see was smoking. Not 50%, not 60% - everyone. It dawned on me what its like to be that sickly kid at school who had asthma and bad allergies. If I put on coke bottle glasses and platform boots for my club foot, that was me. I have been in some smoke filled clubs but that one took the cake. Indeed, later that morning when I got to bed I woke up not being able to breathe because someone was smoking in my room – I then realised it was my clothes from the gig. I actually had to put them outside my room so I could breathe.

Welcome

Greetings all! As you have no doubt surmised, this is my new blog which I intend to fill with my semi-coherent, sometimes meandering prose.

At this stage, I mainly intend to use this blog to publish my diary from various trips around the world which I take as a touring dj & producer. However you can also expect other bits and pieces to be posted when I get a few moments & something catches my eye or raises my ire...