La Paz - or How I dreamt of Micha

I've been busy and cold and sick and all over the place.
So forgive this late entry. My plan is to write a blog entry out of every city I visit.
But in the meanwhile, I'm in Coroico, paradisiac Coroico.
So, let me go back in time, and copy some excerts from my diary,
which I have been able to keep up to date.

Arrived in La Paz at 6am, and the first thing that hit me about the place was the cold. I remember how my first reaction to Bangkok was to grin like a happy imbecile. But here, before a thought could fire in your brain, cold has already reached places in your bone structure you don't even have a name for. After some short breaths, I did get to realize how the surrounding landscape looked like the moon. It was dawn. I shared a microbus to the city with a french couple of my age, and some locals. Actually, I had met the girl on the plane, but quickly dismissed the thought of being social when I discovered she was French. People are often confused at my attitude towards the french. In fact, I avoid the French most, followed by the Israelis, and then the Dutch. Although French-speaking Belgians micht be the uncontested winners. The reason is that, for one, I didn't fork a 1000 euros over to travel halfway around the globe to end up travel-humping with the people I sought to travel AWAY from in the first place. I'll take a Dane, an Aussie or a Scottsman over a Frenchman any day. Also, French people tend to cluster like hamsters. And third, they make for the worst eavesdropping ever. In fact, as an inventor, I feel it is my duty to invent a kind of earplugs that can filter out a specific language of choice. Perhaps tranform french into portugese. I'm sure there's a market. So, as soon as I understood that the French girl was a) French and b) with a boyfriend (2 consecutive OW-moments), I decided to turn around and dive into a long awaited sleep. Which is when I noticed an incredible flaw in Man's Morphology.

So horrible that it instantly disqualifies any claims of Intelligent Design. As I tried to rest my head on my left hand (with my elbow resting on the elbow-rest), I realized that our forearms drastically fall short (litterally). Try as I may, my head simply would not reach the pillow, without risking (who am I kidding: inevitbaly causing) a torticoli. At least, not with all of my neck's spinal bones. Although I did end up falling asleep a few times, I spent every walking minute in despair, for clearly sleep could never come with my pillow so far away. And yet I surprisingly slept. It's the kind of miracle you wish you could explain better, but you simply can't recall. So, a few hours later, a breathtaking cold (and landscape) and a local microbus Tuffi 212 later, we were dropped at Plaza San Francisco. That was saturday morning. Walking towards Hostal El Solario, we walked past a cafe that seemed irresistable. They checked-in somewhere else (a steep slope away) and we set out to find that appetizing cafe again (which we did, but not without some orientational confusion). 24 hours later, this is exactly where I'm sitting, over my third cup of Coca-thee. The first time, we quickly concluded that coca-thee had the taste of dead leaf. Dead, autmn leaf. But the bread was good and the butter nicely salted. Although, funnilym, the bread basket at the buffet seemed to only have baguette-corners to offer. We wondered what they did with the whole middle part of the baguette, but it turned out they simply made the breads as small as to only provide for 2 corners. Kind of like those 2-person horse costumes, only with both persons wearing the ass-part. I can't recall much of the ramining day. Went up to my room, said goodbye to the french couple and met a friendly polish girl that didn't look much polish to me. We chatted a bit before I gratefully climbed into bed with all five layers of clothes.

Sleep was very weird, to say the least.
I woke up numerous times, like a cinematic break between movie sessions. So, each dream cycle, I'd wake up, enjoy the memories of my dream and gave some directorial guidelines for the next dream. Never have I been so happy with my dreaming. In fact, I think I had a threesome (the names of the happy guilty shall remain undisclosed). I mostly dreamed of things straightly related to the very recent events. It seemed that my brain was so overwhelmed by the present stimuli, that it had to dream about each of the present details in order to cope with the recent reality. however, my most euphoric dream involved Micha (my amazing buddy from Valencia) appearing at my hostel in Bolivia. I cannot describe how happy that made me. Of all people on earth, nobody could offer the kind of confort Micha did. In his present, everything would be a-ok. Micha, the easy-going cowboy-like funny careless amigo in need, would make the invasive cold bearable, if not completely dissapear by a magic I wouldn't bother to enquire about. Man was I happy to seem him. I don't remember much else. At some point, around 5pm, I woke up, had some thee with Polish girl and went out to eat something at Hanasich, an arab-israeli restaurant. When I wanted to pay, I realized I had left the money at the hostel. That's nothing. The first time I had left the hostel, I came back to find my passport lying on my bed. That was the first time I met Polish girl. I can't imagine what a fuck-up Bolivia would have been with my passport gone. I have my hands full already with the altitude sickness. This is why, this morning, I set out to the same cafe and drank 3 cups of coca-thee. My theory still stands. Everything gets edible with enough sugar. And now, I don't feel like ever leaving this cafe, nicely warm. I'll go check my e-mail and see where Dim and Ammu are. Then, I'll go find something warm to wear, and book a luxurious bus ride to Uyuni, a place even colder than here. If you're wondering why among travellers geared with arctic coats, insulated gloves and woolen hats, I'm wearing Red All-Stars and 5 layers of normal clothes... well it's because I simply could not accept that I was travelling to a place colder than Belgium. So now I'm facing the cold facts.

Tal Benisty