Three hours from La Paz, three hours from altitude sickness and a capital strewn breathtakingly out at the bottom of a canyon, we find ourselves in Coroico. Coroico, where Andes and Yungas collide and reluctantly, turbulantly, agree to tolerate the opposing world of the other. Coroico, where banana and coca plantations do battle with barren grassland, where a drop of a few hundred feet sees a shift in power from the viulture to the mosquito. 'Vulture', Adri informs me, translates literally into Spanish as 'massive chicken slap to the face'. It possesses a certain ring, no? In Coroico we awake every morning to a yawning valley punctuated by clouds seeking to scale its peaks. Willing them away, every morning we dawdle at the pace of lotus eaters into this sleepiest of mountain villages. All forms of
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