Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
politically conservative
El Diario
, and the less reliable
La Razón
. The main provincial cit-
ies all have their own newspapers, which have a strongly regional outlook:
Los Tiempos
in
Cochabamba is particularly good. The best of the Santa Cruz papers is
El Deber
, though its
regional outlook is so strong you could be forgiven for thinking La Paz was a minor province
of some faraway country, so little attention does it pay to events in the de facto capital. Most
Bolivian newspapers now have their own
websites
. For serious analysis of political, social
and economic developments, Bolivians turn to the weekly news magazine
Pulso
; the fort-
nightly
Juguete Rabioso
is also good.
International newspapers and magazines
are quite hard to come by, though
Time
,
New-
sweek
and
The Economist
are sold in city centres and expensive hotels in La Paz and Santa
Cruz.
Radio
Radio is the most democratic of Bolivia's media, and the only one that adequately reflects the
country's cultural diversity, with many of the country's hundreds of different stations broad-
casting in
indigenous languages
. The leading national news radio station is Radio Fides,
which is owned by the Catholic Church and broadcast on different FM frequencies in all the
major cities. Other than the internet, carrying a short-wave radio is about the best way of
keeping in touch with events back home and in the rest of the world. You can pick up the
BBC World Service in English in most of Bolivia (though not in La Paz, where the surround-
ing mountains block the signal - check
bbc.co.uk/worldservice
for frequencies), as well as
other international broadcasters.
Television
Bolivians watch a growing amount of television, although many homes are still without a
set. There are seven state and numerous private
terrestrial channels
, mostly serving up an
uninspired cocktail of football, news and imported soap operas. Better hotels offer cable or
satellite TV, which in bigger cities means up to eighty channels and often include the likes of
CNN and BBC World, though in smaller cities local cable networks offer a far more limited
selection.
Money
The Bolivian currency is the
peso boliviano
(Bs), referred to as both the peso and (more
commonly) the
boliviano
. Thanks to the weakness of the Bolivian economy the boliviano re-
mains extremely vulnerable to devaluation, and many businesses in Bolivia effectively oper-
ate in US dollars. Tour operators and many hotels quote their prices in US dollars rather than
bolivianos, accepting payment in either currency. Otherwise, it's usual to pay for everything
in bolivianos - indeed most places won't accept anything else.
