I have been dreaming of hiking up to Mount Roraima and traversing Canaima National Park on a boat for a little while now, but it is rather difficult to find someone to give up three weeks of their time and go with me (climbing the table top mountain itself takes an entire week). I think I will go solo eventually, via Manaus in Brazil. A friend also wants to go to see Bolivia’s southeastern geological feature, Salar de Uyuni. If the Hong Kong gang goes, I want to join them. South America is a fairly recent fascination. Looking back, I think Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together, as well as other excellent films such as The Central Station, might have sown the seeds of desire. Several seasons of The Amazing Race, of course, have also contributed to the craze. Lastly, my decision to go home makes it it more opportune to do it now, when I have a real chance, or perhaps never again.
Going to a place like Bolivia, or even the neighboring Peru, is a luxury that few people from Hong Kong can afford. Even from me, leaving from ORD, cost and time are real factors in determining the itinerary. Flying into the high attitude Bolivian capital is almost twice as expensive as flying into the sea-level Peruvian one, which is more developed too in terms of tourist infrastructure. Passport and visa are another concern. Bolivians may visit Hong Kong without a visa, while the Chinese Hong Kong passport holder does need a visa to enter Bolivia. Visa formality is waived for British National (Overseas) passport, but it costs more than four times as much to apply for that look-alike British passport. I like Bolivia’s audacity (even Venezuela does not) to demand Americans to pay $130 for a Bolivia visa, because the United States asks Bolivians to do the same. But then the principle of reciprocity does not apply to some Hong Kongers who are not eligible for BN(O). After surveying all the major countries of South America, Bolivia and Paraguay are the only two states that require visa for Chinese Hong Kong passports. Paraguay’s policy makes a lot of sense, because Paraguay (ruled by the dictator Stroessner, who hated the Communists’ guts) indeed had long been a committed, historical ally of President Chiang Kai-shek and Republic of China. But Bolivia? One of the poorest countries of the continent? Appropriating Chip Tsao’s famous line Come on, James, I want to say to the Bolivian leader, “Come on, Evo,” or, “Come on, Presidente Morales,” no Hong Konger will ever want to overstay, or work illegally in your beautiful country. There is no karaoke or decent dim sum, unlike Peru. Not enough shopping malls. Moreover, Presidente, your sky is too azur for our taste. We actually thrive on pollution.
Learning about airfare and border admission are the first steps. My sister and I are both meticulous souls who are very able travel planners (and actually enjoy the work). We joke about how the planning stage is an ideal, imaginary trip in which nothing can go wrong. At this point, I do not know if I can finally go, but it makes me realize that my knowledge of Bolivia is close to zero, despite knowing, during my undergraduate years in Tucson, a friend/coworker at the International Student Office from Santa Cruz. He said he would go back home to be a cowboy. I knew about Lake Titicaca. I knew, on that lake, the Bolivian Navy and their four-star admirals patrol the waters. This post’s title is not meant to be sarcastic, but growing up so close to the sea, I, like many Hong Kongers, take the bountiful ocean for granted, and do not understand how a people can be so fixated on a body of water. We can easily find strong echoes of the sea in the the national imagination, especially in the new world. There is “Our fair Dominion now extends, From Cape Race to Nootka Sound” in The Maple Leaf Forever and of course, “From Sea to Shining Sea” in America the Beautiful. From this perspective, the Chileans were really evil in cutting Bolivia totally off from the Pacific! Not only that, Bolivia’s access to the Paraguay River is largely reduced to an inconsequential strip of land, later, by Paraguay. ¡Ay, caramba!
I have almost finished reading A Concise History of Bolivia by Herbert Klein, and I actually wanted to blog about the book rather than explaining why I chose to read it. This post is already fairly long so I guess I will do so in the next post. The map/illustration below is from the book. The northern most of present-day Chilean territory was actually ceded by Peru.
By the way, I am so looking forward to the feature-length documentary The Buddha, premiering on PBS on Wednesday April 7!
“Bolivia in 1825 and Today” in p. 101 A Concise History of Bolivia by Herbert S. Klein, Cambridge UP, 2003.
On the Ridge of Pratt 