42 - 44: South America & Cuba

Even as the seasoned traveller that I am, I start to feel a combination of anxiety and nervous excitement which leads to a number of restless nights on the lead up to my South American (SA) trip. I worry about not having any Bolivianos prior to landing in La Paz at 1am. (Nobody wants to stock a currency of a country when it is politically unstable and economically poor.) My backup plan is to withdraw money from the ATM, and I worry that my card's going to get eaten up by the machine. It also doesn't help that I keep on reading stories about tourists getting hijacked, kidnapped and mugged on the Thorntree forum.

"Are you sure you want to go there?" my aunt asks me. "It's a bit of  a cowboy country." Needless to say, South America doesn't generally come up on the top five list of a typical Singaporean traveller.

One of my client's parents asks me whether I want to reconsider going to Las Vegas instead.
"Tell A. if she is in the car, she shouldn't stop at the traffic light as she might get hijacked," I overhear the client's mother in the background.

While the (many) flights to get to La Paz has been tedious, the journey there has reminded me of something I'd nearly forgotten, and that is the ease in which you meet people. On the plane from Sydney to Melbourne I meet a newly graduated nurse who's freshly been bitten by the travel bug. She had coincidentally been to Bolivia recently, and provided some useful insight into the place which helped put my mind at ease.

"All the men wear baseball caps over there," the girl says. (This is so true if the plane load of people flying from LAX to El Salvador is anything to go by.)

On the leg from Sydney to LAX, I strike up a conversation with Rachael and Bianca - 2 girls  enroute to New York for a shopping trip.

It's the act of being on holiday/travelling that instantly makes people more friendly, happy and relaxed. I even strike up a conversation with a Londoner while we both were waiting to charge our Apple accessories at an allocated power station at LAX airport. (Note to self- having an iPhone is really like having an annoyingly demanding child. Somebody really needs to work on improving battery technology.)



Postscript: My airport transfer in Bolivia, (even after confirming with the hotel staff twice,) never arrived, but all was well taking a taxi to the hotel. No issues with being mugged, murdered or kidnapped so far.

Here's to the start of new adventures :)