Internet cafés

If you want to stay in touch with the rest of the world during a visit to Bolivia, you will inevitably find your way to an internet café. In Sucre there were several during my visit, and I also used one in La Paz. Although I am sure that there have been improvements since, there was a noticeable difference in the service quality between the different cafés.

A new internet café being built in Sucre, July 2000

Firstly, the connection in La Paz was much faster and more stable than in Sucre – I think the hardware was probably newer as well.

In Sucre, those cafés affiliated to the national telecommunications provider, Entelnet, definitely appeared to be faster.

La Paz was slightly more expensive, but all the cafés I visited offered good value for money – except one. A smaller, private internet café in Sucre (I think it was in the Calle Audencia) was so slow, that I was unable to read my webmail. As I left, I spotted a 56k modem at work and guess that the network was probably sharing this one analogue line.

As with any public computer, security is an important issue when using these facilities.  It is worth learning how to clear a web browser cache and cookies beforehand, as the computers may just be standard installations and not use any special software to reset them after one customer has finished as is common in European countries.