The Third World – They Do Things Differently There …… It took four hours for us to get riders through immigration and bikes through customs when we crossed from Peru into Bolivia the other day, and we still had the support truck impounded for an alleged irregularity in Bolivia a year ago. Don’t ask – it’s a long story.

So we got some time to sit and watch the comings and goings across the border and saw a constant stream in both directions of small pedal carts moving a few hundred pounds of stuff at a time – potatoes, toilet rolls, grapes into Bolivia – bricks, eggs into Peru. Every one of these carts being pushed by drab men in Premier League team shirts and ladies in traditional Quechua (pronounced ketch-wah) dress – multiple layers of skirts, woolen cardigans, and the stylish bowler hats – adopted from British railway workers in the 1920s; I kid you not. These ladies also always wore a multi-coloured shawl wrapped around their shoulders to carry something – clothes, groceries, a child. Always there and always full of something,

This ant-like flow is due to the fact that it could take days of waiting, paperwork, or handouts to get the actual trucks across the border. So, as we came into town, we saw a dozen 72 foot trailers of potatoes being unloaded and transported cart by cart to the same number of trucks on the other side which were disgorging something else to be carted over to Peru. Clearly these hundreds of labouring souls are cheaper in the Third World than the time and inconvenience of agreeing a functional border process.