Coroico

My last few weeks in Bolivia I was wracked by disease. In a classic one-two punch I had a nauseating intestinal illness followed by a cold that left me snufflying all the way to California. This didn’t stop me from taking a trip to Coroico on the last weekend, and swimming in the hotel pool surrounded by potted hibiscus which overlooks the valley below. The climate changes from La Paz to Bolivia are difficult to get used to. In three hours you slip from the dry yellow plains of the altiplano to la cumbre (or the summit) where buses and cars are blessed for the journey. Then you move through a pass and are winding down into the fertile hills covered in vegetation. Suddenly there are semi-tropical plants and parrots. They grow bananas, ferns, coca, and huge red-flowering trees. The road is billed as the “most dangerous road in the world,” by the mountain bike companies offering downhill rides along its narrow dirt expanse. The buses seem adept at taking the route, honking at corners as they swing wide into the other lane. If two large buses meet, one has to back up until there is sufficient room for two to pass. At least one bus simply backed off of one of these cliffs in the three months that I was there.

Coroico is a beautiful little town, but I had the same reaction I’ve had traveling alone in other beautiful little Bolivian towns: Now what? It’s not that there isn’t plenty to do, given will and organizational skills. There are wonderful hiking trails and outdoor activities like the mountain biking trips. For some reason I seem incapable of getting myself together enough to plan one of these. It is a combination of poor social skills (lack of travel companions), illness and lack of organization in this case. Due to my cold, my ears were dulled by the pressure changes of the trip, and I felt like I was in my own muffled world. This is how I imagine that autistic children feel, pleasantly removed from caring about the actions of people around you.

In Coroico, there was a party of new Yorkers attending a wedding, identifiable because they were skinny, overdressed, and slightly unfriendly. This is the opposite what usually identifies Americans- friendlier, heavier and dressed down relative to other tourists.

I had a bus ride out of Coroico on Sunday, but dallied on the other side of the plaza with some French acquaintances while the bus blithely left at precisely two (I had assumed that there would be the usual half an hour delay while they loaded huge bundles to the roof). Every ticket was sold out until the next day. At times like these my North American roots kick in and I bitch about order and efficiency and “why didn’t they anticipate this?” The New Yorkers were about to let me travel back with their chartered bus, but supposedly one of the buses broke down ahead on the road. Luckily, a Cuban band from La Paz who I vaguelly knew (they had been playing at the New Yorker's wedding), had bought extra tickets for their conga drums and were willing to let me squeeze in to their party. The moral? If you need help, ask a Cuban not an American.

That is how I ended up driving away from Coroico at night, with my aching ear resting on the shoulder of a beautiful brown musician. Above a line of fire crept up the mountain, started to prepare the hills for the coming planting season. In my other ear, Jose whispered over and over, “don’t leave on Friday” as he flashed me his white teeth