Tourists stuck in Bolivia

2003-10-16 21:35

La Paz - Brazil sent two air force transport planes to Bolivia on Thursday to evacuate over 150 stranded Brazilian tourists, but hundreds more from Australia, Britain, the United States and other countries remain caught in the country's unrest.

Most are stuck in the capital, La Paz, unable to leave the Andean country because the main international airport in the nearby city of El Alto has been closed to commercial flights since Sunday.

Many tourists and back-packers who flow through La Paz looking for a south American adventure have got more than they bargained for in the last couple of days as clashes between the authorities and demonstrators have paralyzed the city.

European embassies have warned their nationals against trying to get to the airport as El Alto has seen some of the worst troubles and the road from La Paz is cut by road blocks.

A foreign diplomat said that a school gymnasium in the south of La Paz, and under army protection, had been opened to house those who want to leave the city.

Brazil and Peru are the first countries to try evacuate their tourists here.

Peru began to evacuate 45 of its nationals caught up in the strife on Wednesday.

Most of the remaining foreigners are cooped up in their rooms in hotels next to the central Plaza San Francisco.

"On Monday morning we saw all the shops in the street had pulled down their shutters, our hotel was barricaded with sandbags and the first tear gas grenades went off around 11 o'clock in the street against demonstrators protesting the massacres the day before in El Alto," said Coninne Munsch, one of 60 stranded French tourists.

Munsch and the other foreigners awoke Monday morning to fiery demonstrations raging in the streets around their hotels.

Instead of some holiday bargain-hunting and snapping picturesque street-corners, tourists have had to pick their way through the debris of pitched street-battles and numerous road blocks in the four or five streets that make up the main tourist center.

"One can find water, ham, cheese, bread, coffee, for the moment it's available," said Antoine Esteve, who arrived in La Paz Friday.

The capital is threatened with food shortages due to the protests and roadblocks which have shut down key transport routes across Bolivia.

"It was very dramatic," said another tourist who arrived last Thursday.

For the moment most of the hotels are managing to keep up their normal menus, but some have had to improvise meals due to shortages which have been felt more by Bolivians than their foreign guests.

- AFP