After a day in Tacna, where other than the earlier mentioned military parade and folk dancing the only interesting thing that happened was being befriended by a 70 year-old (only moderately toothless) Peruvian man, who told me his life story. I really did not mind, because he started chatting to me as I was sitting on the main square, crying so at least he stopped me from carrying on with that. He was a former soldier and told me about the many women he had seduced in his time; actually, he still behaved like a bit of a stud, despite the fact that he was ancient and only had one arm (what is it with me and one-armed people?), but I guess as we get older, our self-image does not necessarily change according to the changes in our appearance...anyway, I also got aggressed by a gypsy woman: she thought I gave her too little in change. This has not happened to me yet, and I must have given away at least a hundred dollars in change in the past three months. This is so not PC, but... what is it with the gypsies everywhere? They are despized even by the poorest of the poor in a country like Peru (as my old friend was keen to explain). The liberal, human rights conscious lawyer in me wants to get to the roots of why this is the case and be tolerant and helpful; but when this woman started yelling at me and cursing me, I got really frustrated and just took the money back and told her to f*ck off.

Anyway, I gave salmonella another chance: ate some of this Peruvian specialty that consists of raw fish and seafood marinated in vinegar and then took a night bus to the border. Of course, I was misled as to the destination and route of the bus so I ended up at the border at 4 am, which meant that I had to overnight in a rathole and then rough it through the border on foot the next day together with the scary ladies, all their animals, and hundreds of the toothless friends: a scene which I now observed with the arrogance of those "in-the-know", rather than the shock of the novice tourist...now I am back in La Paz, unfortunately until Friday morning, which is when my flight to Rio leaves. Initially I planned on taking a plane to another Bolivian city and then going to Brazilia overland, but I chickened out and decided to pay the 350 US dollars to the great Llyoyd Bolivian Airlines. I am not too happy about spending this extra time here, but it is all due to my stupidity so I am trying to stay cool.