The Food of Bolivia 141affected by this potent exacta shouldn’t be far away from a
napping place.
At dinner, drinking customs are more elaborate. When
dinner invitations are tendered, the guest may decide to
take a bottle of wine or whiskey to the host, but fl owers
or chocolates are of equal value as an offering. Pre-dinner
appetisers and cocktails may include the national hard drink
called Singani or locally made whiskey. For accompanying
the dinner, soft drinks, beer, or to a lesser extent, wine, are
usually available.
After dinner conversation is usually accompanied by
drinking, with liqueurs added to the above array of drinks
as an option.
Outside the home, drinking venues in Bolivia may be
a culture shock for European continentals. In Europe, the
café-bar remains open day and night, and social drinking
may occur at various hours of day, evening or night. The
doors of Bolivian whiskerias remain closed until after dinner
time. As for cafés, the lower the altitude the more likely
that these venues may be used as gathering places with
outdoor facilities.
In Britain, it has been discovered that police problems
linked to consumption of beer and alcoholic beverages
have been reduced by making opening and closing hours
of pubs more fl exible, thereby discouraging binge drinking
and harmonising with continental European drinking
customs. The restricted business hours of Bolivian whiskerias
may actually stimulate binge drinking, and no one denies
that heavy drinking may be a social problem, especially
among youth.
Numerous expat bars with upscale appearance are
magnets for visitors. Long-stay visitors, especially Europeans,
usually stake out their favourite drinking turf and become
regulars. Expat bars often become speciality venues. You
may fi nd anything from poets’ bars and geologists’ bars to
football bars. Only word of mouth can tell you the specialities
of such bars.
Darkened bars may be a venue for coperas, occasional
prostitutes whose principle livelihood is hanging around