arriving into Coroico, our first evening in Coroico

---

La Paz is still in fiesta. Children are still racing around with water pistols and firecrackers line the streets as a way of celebrating. They are so noisy, you never know where the explosives are and when they do go off everybody crouches down with their hands over their ears. If this is a party, I’d hate to see what Bolivia is like during a revolution, or a period of political instability.

I was also surprised today to see a young girl of 10 years old working in the trufe /minibus and taking our fare. Often trufes have a driver and a person who collects the fare from the passengers. It is common here to see young children working to make money for the family. Poorer people tend to sell hand-made products and richer people own land. Owning land in Bolivia is the key to being rich because the biggest money-making sector in Bolivia appears to be agriculture.

In the morning we headed up into the clouds again to Ronald’s auntie’s place to re-pack our bags before heading to the tropics. We went looking for a bus to Villa Fatima, which is at the top of a mountain, but a different mountain from Ronald’s Auntie’s place which is called La Ceja. For this reason we needed to go up to La Ceja, back down to the town and back up to Villa Fatima. This journey saves us carrying a lot of luggage but at the same time it involves a lot of walking up steep hills with little oxygen.

We went looking for some hot food in Villa Fatima before getting the two hour bus ride to the tropics, but because of the fiesta all businesses and restaurants were closed and cooking was prohibited so we could only find fresh fruit in yoghurt, home-made crisps and cheesy puffs. Today everybody is inside their businesses counting their money and then getting drunk if they find their business has been lucrative during the year. Many houses and restaurants have balloons outside, there are many drunk people in the street sleeping at the side of roads – Ronald says that these are the people who have very lucrative businesses and that they have counted their profits and so excited to find they are so rich they drink until they are unconscious. Apart from this, kids and adults are still running lose with powerful water pistols, cans of foam and water bombs. All this effort is related to ‘challando’ – celebrating the money made during the year. This continues all over Bolivia in February but each province has its week of 'carnaval' Each day for about 4 days there are carnivals from about midday to 7pm where all the communities from the region dance through the city in colourful costumes for the entire 7 hours, all accompanied by a band and all with different music, usually with drums, and the dancers dance in sequence to the beat wearing matching and very colourful costumes.

Once we got to Coroico which was 2 and a half hours away by bus, in the tropics, the party was still continuing as Coroico belongs to the big province of La Paz. It took us a long time to find a decent hostel even though there were lots of hostels. Very few of them were registered online, and none of them had wifi which is now becoming a bit of a spoiler for me as I had planned my trip around having wifi, and being able to plan the next step using it but now I’ve left the capital city of Bolivia, it is almost non-existent and the few cafes and restaurants which do have it are absolutely full of tourists all using wifi on their phones. Like me, they probably don't know when will be the next chance to get on wifi so when they find a place with it they stay there for the entire day.

The bus ride itself was interesting and scenic, but very bumpy as every bus ride is here. We were in a little minibus packed in with about 9 other people for 2 hours. We went up the mountain range called Yuncas and back down another to get into the tropics. The mountain road is the world’s famous ‘most dangerous road’ or’death road’ as it is called back in the UK. It is the most famous tourist event in Bolivia. Many adrenaline junkies on motorbikes come to Bolivia just to go over this dangerous road which has an enormous drop on one side. It’s dangerous particularly because in the morning the clouds hang over the road. It is subject to bad weather conditions, many parts of it don’t have barriers and the drop down is huge. These long mountain bus rides tend to include a series of different weather patterns – strong sun in some parts, heavy rain in others and strong winds in other bits and spells of hailstone storms.

Once we got above the clouds, down the drop on my right hand side all I could see below were clouds and I felt at that moment I was higher than I had ever been in aeroplane. I wasn’t cold but I couldn’t feel my hands, I had poor circulation and I felt a bit dizzy an hour into the journey. However with deep yoga breathing I got through it easily enough. My yoga teacher explained that this deep style of breathing can even get people through episodes of torture in torture chambers. Besides which, I’ve invented a game to play with Ronald on these bumpy road trips so that the time passes quicker. I have to look for dogs on the side of the road (there are many) and decide if they are strays or pets. Ronald knows the difference so I have to guess and I get the point if I guess correctly. All the dogs look wild to me, as wild as Bolivia looks itself, but most of them turn out to be pets and I’m surprised. I suppose dogs here aren’t as well groomed as they are in the UK where dogs are fitted with doggy jackets and treated to regular pampering sessions.

Once we arrived into the tropics two and a half hours later we saw lots of orange, mandarin and banana trees. Also I noticed that unlike La Paz many people are negros here owing to the slave trade. When the Spanish brought over slaves to work on the land in Peru, many slaves crossed Lake Titicaca and went to find hotter places such as Copacabana and Coroico and stayed, had families and the negro here now are the descendants of the slaves who never returned home but instead made lives for themselves here.

We looked at about 15 hostels before we found a decent one, climbing up hills and back down again asking the same questions –‘do you have a private bathroom?’ ‘do you have wifi?’ ‘how much?’ Eventually we found one. We then went out to look for restaurants which were all either closed due to fiestas or packed because everybody was looking for food. After not eating since midday, it was about 9pm when we found a place selling cooked chicken, rice and fried bananas. We finished our meal and bought a bottle of beer to share whilst we sat in the square. We were enjoying our beer when all of a sudden all the lights in the town went out for a minute, lit again, and went out for the entire evening. I presumed it was part of the fiestas, maybe a game where people dress up and play murder in the dark. However it was clearly not the case as people were unprepared and many kids were running around laughing and trying to scare each other, Ronald said probably the people in charge of electricity have gone out to get drunk at 9pm to celebrate 'Carnaval' and a prosperous business leaving the electricity to look after itself. Luckily I had brought a torch with me as I knew the hostel was dark, had lots of steps and after the difficult day I thought it was likely that I would get drunk to celebrate finding a hostel and food, which was such a big triumph and took a lot of effort.

When we got back to the hostel we had to press a bell to get the owner’s attention, but of course the bell didn’t sound as all the electricity had been cut. Luckily the owner realised we were there and let us in.

---