Nationalisation, a Bolivian border guard with a gun on coke, and a smashed up faded hippy bus without any hippies

Though this picture looks like it was taken in 1908, it was actually taken by E.R. in 2001 at the Bolivian-Chile border.
A week ago the Bolivian government announced nationalisation of the country's energy resources. It's an interesting decision, and left-wing governments that still play ball with the big private companies in this sector will be watching keenly at their progress.
It already seems that the decision will mean that private investment in the country necessary to discover further supplies will be cut, and mean supplies from the country will struggle to be maintained.
But E.R. can't help thinking that though the decision seems a little naive in these global capitalist times, that the little country with the big reputation may still succeed. It has plenty of customers who don't want to be cut off.
The economics of energy mean that the Bolivian government is aware that it will not be long before it can start to deliver profits as well as power to its people.
My memories of my brief visit are quite surreal.
This picture was taken just north of the border with Chile. The visit was organised by a Bolivian guy that ran trips from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, across the border to see the beautiful lakes in the south of Bolivia.
Because of a teachers' strike at the time, which had caused troops sent onto the streets and riots in which 50 people were killed, all the main border points with Bolivia were shut until order was restored.
But this border check point was basically a shack, with a little row of white painted pebbles running about 30 metres either side, laid out in a neat line.
We paid a dollar each, which I think smoothed the way of our fleeting visit with the resident officials.
A border guard with a gun and a black motorbike smudged white powder into his gums and smiled when we arrived. If you were casting an actor to play him in a movie, Benicio Del Toro would be your first choice every time.
He escorted us into the shack, and we queued outside a tiny office. Inside of it, an official of a more senior rank and slicker facial hair, with a revolver on his table, took our dollar, checked our paperwork and stamped our papers.
But the most surreal thing was the hippy bus. A 1960s bus that could probably carry about 40 or 50 people sat stranded in the desert just a few yards from the checkpoint's line of pebbles.
The wheels had gone, the windows smashed, and the CND signs and flowers on the side were faded after years of sandblasting from the desert wind.
But there it sat.
I always wondered how it had got there, and where all the hippies had gone on the day it broke down in the desert, all those years ago.