Toronto to Miami to La Paz - Day 0

12/01/09

I'm excited as I get on my flight in Toronto, the spanish speaking begins already. I open up an article on understanding class analysis in the New Left Review and we soar to 38,000 feet.

After only slightly more than an hour of sleep I wake up to that groggy, confused flight sensation, and under me is a very comfortable looking cloud carpet which changes patterns every four minutes. I realize we're getting close to Miami. I snap a few pictures and stare in delight as I regain myself, then I reopen the review and finish the article. We begin our descent, and perhaps in symbolic Miami dread, my ears pressurize, pop, and bloc all the way down. I say dread because Miami's reality is not a pleasant one; a perfect example of U.S. third world formula and false democracy, and city of drugs, crime, prostitution, and poverty. Miami is also disgraceful home to a few thousand Latin American right-wing political exiles, corrupt politicians, businessmen, landowners, millionaires, terrorists, and human rights abusers of all sorts who've been regurgitated and expelled by the people of their own countries. I have 5 1/5 hours to wait at the airport, but I don't even want to go into the city.

Even though I dislike waiting in airports, it always amuses me to look and laugh at the useless, faceless, generic, robotic businessmen with their cellphones and bluetooth, all having the exact same conversations over and over again. A well trained colony of sterile, oblivious subjects.

From Miami to El Alto, where La Paz's international airport is located, I sleep for most of the journey. The only thing noteworthy about the flight is meal time when I'm offered either beef or chicken, so naturally I ask for the vegetarian option and I'm informed that I had to order it ahead of time, when, where, and how, however, nothing more is specified to me. The capitalist world doesn't care about vegetarians, partly because it goes against traditional and conservative values, and partly because it questions the nature of the system and is not good for business. In Bolivia, for example, where it is even more difficult to find people who don't eat meat, there happened to be a vegetarian restaurant right next to my hostel.

I wake up to the sunrise which indicates I am nearing my destination, and I look out the window and see mountains rising above the clouds, the Andean arteries to the heart. Bolivia.