We boarded the 16a bus on Nutgrove Avenue on the first leg of our journey to La Paz, Bolivia. My daughter, Orla, thought it a less than romantic way to begin her first visit to South America.
I, however, was thinking of Paul Theroux's The Old Patagonia Express: "For some this was the train to Sullivan Square, or Milk Street, or at the very most Orient Heights. For me it was the train to Patagonia."
Twenty-six hours later we were circling above the highest capital city in the world, lying in a steep canyon at 3,636 metres. To our left the snow-capped Mount Illimani dominated the vast landscape. A British and Commonwealth Office travel report states: "Recent incidents in La Paz show a trend towards aggressive crimes against visitors, including the use of knives and chokeholding the victim until unconscious."
But there are other crimes against visitors not mentioned in the report. Travelling on a British passport I quickly passed through immigration, but Orla, with her Irish documentation, was forced to pay $47. Corruption is endemic in Bolivia, a country that holds the record of having staged almost 190 coups d'etat in its 168 years of independence. The current democratically-elected President, Hugo Banzer, was responsible for one of them in 1971 when, as a right-wing colonel, he overthrew the progressive government of Anton Aranibar.
In the mid-80s, in an interview with a government minister, I raised the subject of corruption within the police force. Holding a cup of mate (made from the coca leaf) the minister led me to the window of his office and pointed to a policeman far below. "That man is earning the equivalent of $30 per month - that is the reason." And Bolivia continues to pay the lowest wages in South America.
Droughts in recent years have forced indigenous peasants to migrate to an already overcrowded city of 1.3 million people. There they build their shanty towns up the steep sides of the canyon and anxiously await the next landslide.
Tiring of the permanent hangover induced by the high altitude, we decided to travel eastwards to the low-lying Yungas.
This region, one of the most important in Bolivia, is commercially handicapped by having only a narrow dirt road connecting it to La Paz. When it is passable it carries over 100 lorries a day laden with hardwood, nuts, cattle, citrus fruits, coffee, honey and coca leaves. The journey takes between 20 and 40 hours and can be highly dangerous, as the hundreds of crosses testify.
The Yungas, apart from the Champare near Cochabamba, is the most important coca-growing region in Bolivia, and has resisted all efforts by President Banzer to eradicate it. The authorities maintain that only 7,000 hectares of coca plantations remain, of which 2,500 are in the Yungas. Many observers dispute these figures.
But beyond dispute is the escalation of violence between the police and the coca-growers, with several killings on both sides. Last week President Banzer announced that the programme of eradication would continue, and the farmers responded by organising defence committees.
The President admitted, however, that "coca zero" was unattainable. The problem is that the coca leaf is a legal crop in Bolivia, and remains an integral part of the culture of the majority indigenous population. Today it is no longer safe to wander near the coca-growing regions.
A possible economic escape for Bolivia, South America's poorest nation, is the fact that it is one of the wealthiest in biodiversity. Now the government is attempting to use this natural bounty as a spur to its economy.
The plan also includes the ambitious goals of preserving its wild lands, and increasing biodiversity contributions from the current $350 million to $1.65 billion within the next decade through the development of sustainable ecotourism.
From what we observed in the Pampas and the jungle, that could be achievable. But it may not prove a panacea if the usual corruption enters the equation.
Last autumn President Clinton sent Madeleine Albright to put further pressure on the Bolivian government. She promised, in return for the eradication programme, to double the United States funding of alternative development to $110 million, but the government maintains that greater foreign aid and the lifting of tariffs on textiles are needed to compensate for the loss of the cocaine trade.
The government says the near elimination of cocaine production has significantly increased social unrest and inflated popular demands. Last September the coca farmers, along with other workers, brought the country to a standstill for three weeks.
The farmers complain that very little of the alternative production money which was promised has been passed to them. Many farmers are now threatening not to cut but to increase the level of their plantations.