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| On El Choro in Bolivia, walking into mountain mists. |
OK, so I'm exaggerating. I should be alive, and I am. I'm just being dramatic. (And thievish. "I Shouldn't Be Alive" is actually the name of some survivalist documentary show on the Animal Planet channel. I've never seen the show myself but have only heard the title--which for the purposes of this post is just too good not to steal.)
In August 2010 I very uncharacteristically spent three days hiking through the wilderness of Bolivia, of all places, on an old Incan trail known as El Choro. While it didn't prove to be a death-defying experience (unless I'm still just in denial about it), it was physically and emotionally challenging enough to scare the mierda out of me at times and find me asking myself afterward, So what was that all about, René?
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| Me on the Choro trek, confused as to what's a girl like me doing something like this. |
The answer is adventure. It was all about adventure. Seeking it out, inviting it into your life, allowing it to lead you down steep mountain trails and through dark jungle paths, finding out whether you can survive, and proving to yourself you can. That's what it was about. And also about being a proper tourist I suppose, since El Choro is mentioned in all the Bolivian guidebooks.
The Choro trek is a 3-day hike that follows one of the pre-Columbian trails built by the Incas long, long ago. It starts at 15,000+ feet, at a mountain pass called La Cumbre, and descends more than 10,000 feet to a tiny village called Chairo at the edge of the Bolivian Amazon. Starts in the cold and dry, ends in the hot and wet. It's a fairly challenging walk but not a dangerous one, not for an experienced trekker at least, or anyone with the proper footwear, gear, and attitude--none of which applied to me.
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| Me and my pitiful trekking outfit, at the start of the trail. |
I did the Choro trek in a pair of ancient gym shoes with the soles worn smooth, corduroy trousers, and an old, beat-up, wool Aran sweater with holes in the elbows. Also a small, school-size backpack with my makeup in it (because I insist on looking like a lady wherever I go, even in the jungle) and a pair of broken walking poles that I had no idea how to use. A good start. That's me at the top of this post just starting off on the trek. I look nearly as ill-fitted for trekking as someone in a scuba suit.
Along with being inadequately prepared, I got a late start. Most people doing the trek leave La Paz at the crack of dawn, or at least by 8 or 9 in the morning, in a van organized by their tour company. I didn't hit the trail until about noon. But at least I got there in style—in a cab. A classic checker cab. Yes, I took a taxi to a 15,000-foot-altitude mountain pass. Me and my porter, Baladio.
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| My main man Baladio. |
Oh, Baladio, my dear porter, guide, and brother in ill-planned adventure. Oh the good times we had, and the bad times too. The ups, the downs, the laughs, the tears, the trips, the falls, the ankle sprains, the elaborate hand gestures we came up with to communicate because you know no English and I know no Spanish, and the inevitable shrugs. Baladio and I got along like the Queen of England and Gerry Adams. We met at the tour office on Sagarnaga Street near the witches market in La Paz, where I’d signed up for the trek and was told I’d be joining a small Swiss group—so small the number in the group apparently consisted of 0 people, and that’s where the trouble between me and Baladio began.
Baladio wasn’t happy about the fact that he’d be trekking through the mountains and jungle all for one lady instead of the 4 or so folks he’d been promised. He was so unhappy about it, we wasted a good 2 hours in La Paz as he and the young girl staffing the tour office argued about it. They argued about the promised number of trekkers, they argued about money, they argued about my lousy footwear (Baladio pointed to them, saying “No bueno, senorita”), my trousers (Baladio leaned over and fingered the material, saying “No bueno, cholita”), my sleeping bag (Baladio didn’t want to carry it), my backpack (Baladio just didn’t seem to like it). They argued as the girl tried calling her boss over and over so he could talk to Baladio, never getting an answer. They argued as we left the office and headed across town to an equipment storage building. And on the way there they even argued over whether the road we walked on was new.
In the equipment storage building, Baladio made me nearly cry as he repeated how unfit my clothes were for the trek, pointing at them and fingering them again with a look of disgust on his face, and told me I’d have to find my own way to La Cumbre Pass. His cruelty did the trick though—the tour office girl forked over an extra 20 bolivianos, and suddenly everything was cool.
Back at the witches market, Baladio found a cab to take us up to the pass. We stopped at a roadside food stand on the way where Baladio bought some food for the trek and forbade me to
get out of the cab. As we got higher up into the mountains, the cab driver
began slowing down in expectation of Baladio telling him to stop and let us off. “Aqui?” he’d say to Baladio, who’d shake his head and motion a little farther ahead with his fingers and say, “Poco mas.” We passed some other trekkers. Our driver repeated “Aqui?” “Poco mas,” said Baladio. We reached a point when there was no more road left. “Aqui?” said the driver. “Poco mas,” said Baladio. We began driving over vegetation. Some local mountain folk we passed here and there stopped to stare as our checker cab went by and climbed higher and higher up the mountain. “Aqui,” said our driver. “Poco,” said Baladio. I saw the driver glance in his rearview mirror at me, a definite look of confusion and worry in his eyes.
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| Startled llamas and shepherd, approaching our cab. |
Finally we reached a place where the mountain sloped down steeply into a valley. A narrow trail ran down the slope, alongside a wall of the mountain and then out into the valleyside. Baladio told our driver to stop and handed him a wad of cash, and I got out just in time to see a startled shepherd with a few equally startled llamas coming up over the ridge. Baladio took my picture as the llamas dodged the leaving taxi, and then we finally started our descent.
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| On the old Inca road. |
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| Alpaca and more llamas. |
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| Child herding sheep on the Choro trail, Baladio up ahead. |
The next few hours involved Baladio walking way ahead of me through some of the most stunning landscape I’ve ever seen. The descent was mostly gentle on this first day, and much of it was on the original Inca path of flat stones laid down like a long and winding patchwork carpet. We walked through mountain mists and wisps of cloud, over patches of ice and snow, past flocks of woolly sheep and fluffy llamas and the occasional village of maybe half a dozen small, thatched houses. When we got to one village, I had to pay a small toll for maintenance of the Inca trail and sign my name in a little book. The toll-keeper was an old cholo woman dressed in full, bright-pink-colored skirts, more fit for a party than an ordinary day in a tiny mountain village. She wore the traditional black bowler hat on her head of jet black hair, arranged in two long braids loosely tied together in the back. She was beautiful, but too shy to let me take a picture of her. She just smiled and looked down and shook her head, as she and Baladio enjoyed a few minutes’ conversation in Aymara, one of the indigenous languages of the Andean peoples.
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| Walking through a village on the Choro trail. |
Even as the trail on the first day wasn’t too steep, I had trouble keeping up with Baladio, who kept barking “Vamonos” at me and wouldn’t let me stop for as long as I would have liked to rest or take pictures or slow down just to enjoy the scenery. One of my knees finally gave out when we weren’t far from our first night’s camping ground. Crossing a wooden bridge over a stream, I put my foot down off the bridge only to have my knee buckle, causing me to tumble down onto the stream bank. I had difficulty getting back up, and Baladio looked back at me with a worried expression on his face, an expression that screamed: Two more days trekking with this hopeless clutz.
We reached a river with some camping grounds on the other side of a more impressive bridge close to sundown. All the other trekkers were already camped on the other side of the river and bridge, in some shelters ready-made for them with several picnic tables for cooking and eating. Baladio didn’t cross us over to the other side of the river just yet. We stayed on the near side, me in a tent on the river bank in the shelter of another old cholo woman’s hut. Up a steep hill diagonal from the old woman’s hut was a little outhouse with no toilet paper or running water and a vine to tie the door shut. I hobbled with stiff knees and sore leg muscles back down the hill and went into the old woman’s hut for dinner.
This cholo woman was quite a bit older than the one at the toll village. She wore the same bowler hat and braids and full skirts, though in less bright colors. She wore no shoes or slippers, even though it was quite cold in the evening mountain air and though her hut only had a dirt floor. Her feet were clean enough, but with toe nails thick and darkened with age. The hut was only one room with a small loft. She had a narrow cot on one end of the hut, propped up by wood and hay and papers. Under her cot she kept some pots and pans and dishes, which Baladio borrowed to make our soup and dinner over a little fire in the center of her hut. Madame and I sat on a tiny stool and a wooden stump while Baladio cooked, snacking on cookies and drinking coca tea to keep warm. Before drinking some orange soda Baladio had brought along, he poured a little out on the dirt floor, for Pachamama, the goddess of the earth. Madame nodded and repeated the goddess' name with a smile. A single dim light bulb hung from the ceiling of the hut, the only evidence of electricity other than an old radio that just picked up in scratchy style some station in La Paz or Coroico or who knows where. Madame chatted with Baladio in Aymara and lent a hand every now and again with the cooking, but mostly sat contentedly with her hands in her lap and a smile on her face. She seemed to enjoy the company. I know I was. I thought of how lucky I was after all the troubles of the morning. All the other trekkers were on the other side of the bridge and river, eating their dinner at the picnic tables or in their tents. Most of them also had porters to help make their dinner for them, but none of them were invited into the little house of one of the locals to eat dinner.
After dinner, I went back out into my tent to sleep, dressed in layers of clothes and cuddled up in my sleeping bag to keep out the cold mountain air. A light rain fell sometime during the night, but I didn't hear it, lulled to sleep as I was by the gentle gurgle of the river rushing along beside me.
It was good I had a decent day behind me, because the day ahead of me now, Day 2, was hell. I woke up stiff and in pain, muscles and knees, and made the mistake of not taking the time to take some painkillers I had brought, thinking once I started walking I'd feel better. I slathered on some deep heat lotion while using the outhouse, but not enough.
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| Day 2--walking along the river, heading into tropical territory. |
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| Me trying to smile through the pain at the start of Day 2. |
Day 2 on El Choro was tough not just because of the pain I was in, but also because so much of it the first few hours was down steep and slippery rock. Now I understood why Baladio had protested my old gym shoes so much. They didn't have the grip on the rock they should have, and with my knees already in pain, I only managed by inching slowly down the path sideways, like a crab. It made Baladio impatient and embarrassed--he didn't like that all the other trekkers and their porters kept passing us up. I was embarrassed too, especially after one German or Dutch or whatever woman passed me up and asked if I have knee implants. "Uh, no, I'm in pain."
Baladio was stubborn and unsympathetic--contrary as he was the day before when he couldn't help arguing with the girl in the tour office in La Paz over the age of the road on Sagarnaga Street. He refused to slow down or give me much time to rest. An older group of Brits that kept pace with us cheered me on anyway and tried to communicate with their porters to tell mine to give me a break. I remember at one point passing the Brits as they were taking a nice long break by a small beach along the riverbank, taking photos of the lovely flowers and foliage and diving off boulders on the bank while their porters were only too happy to take it easy and drink tea in the shade. Not Baladio. "Vamonos," he ordered me, and I struggled up a steep ridge where he got well ahead of me and I got well out of earshot from the bathing Brits and their porters so I could unashamedly break down and cry.
It had occurred to me by now that if something happened to me, say if my knee gave out again and I tumbled off a cliff, or if I slipped and ended up breaking a bone, there was no help for me out here. When I say we were trekking through the wilderness, I mean it. The only road going through this area is the ancient Inca path we were walking on. There are no cars, no shops, no restaurants, no hospitals or tourist centers. The locals in their remote huts and tiny villages get out of the region by walking out of it, same as we were doing. If anything happened to me, I would have required an air lift out of the area by helicopter to get any medical assistance. And at this point I wasn't sure Baladio cared enough about me to guarantee a call for help if I needed it.
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| Lovely views, scary place. |
Baladio now promised our lunch stop wasn't far ahead. That was the only thing that kept me going. When we got to the lunch stop, a little canteen in a clearing on top of the mountain, Baladio and I sat at a picnic table under a tree and ate a lunch of tuna, while a black cat cozied up to us for the scraps. I expected Baladio to be merciless to the cat and shove it away--but he fed it kindly and talked sweetly to the animal, which tempered my own anger at Baladio. This was even after noticing two other young, male trekkers who had been keeping pace with us as they lounged for a long time with books in hand at the canteen, their porters patiently waiting for the end of their clients' reading hour with a couple beers. What was it that made my porter so impatient and anti-rest? I knew if I had pulled out a book on a break, Baladio would've snatched it from my hand and thrown it off a cliff...and then walked on without me. Meanwhile, the Brits came along, stopped for a Coke at the canteen, and then trudged on. "Vamonos," Baladio ordered me, after borrowing some of my industrial strength DEET-drenched bug spray and aiming it directly at a bite on his face, near his eye, just like the directions tell you not to do.
We were in much warmer and lusher terrain now, getting closer to the jungle. More vegetation, more trees, more mosquitoes--a lot more mosquitoes. Baladio proudly pointed out a banana tree growing off the ridge, holding back the leaves so I could better see the fruit and insisting I take a picture. He also pointed out the trail ahead--a thin, faint line in the vegetation on the mountainside across a deep ravine. He indicated the camp wasn't much farther ahead. When we passed a sign painted on a rock at one point that claimed the camp was only 2 minutes ahead, I rejoiced--then cursed after 2 minutes of trekking passed and the sign turned out to be a blatant lie.
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| Baladio holding back some leaves on a banana plant. |
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| See that thin line in the mountain on the right? That's our way ahead. |
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| Me. |
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| San Francisco 2 minutes ahead--supposedly. |
Our 2nd night's camp, San Francisco, was a small cluster of a couple of thatched houses and a shelter for tents right off the trail and overlooking the valley. Banana and citrus fruit trees abounded, and birdsong seemed to come from all directions. It was undeniably beautiful, and I regretted being in too much pain to walk around the area more with the light still left in the afternoon. Instead I collapsed in my tent until dinnertime, and then crawled back in again after eating, enjoying the view only from the open flap in my tent. Only two other trekkers (the bookworms from the canteen) and their porters shared the camping space here. The Brits were at a camp a little farther ahead. And instead of the old cholo woman from the 1st night, we had the company of a small, wiry, elderly man with a big toothless smile, who lived in one of the huts of the camp.
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| View from my little tent. |
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| The casa at camp San Francisco. |
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| Morning of Day 3. |
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| Baladio makes a friend. |
The 3rd and last morning I was awakened in the dark by Baladio tapping on my tent and calling "Senoritaaaa. Oh cholitaaa..." in a sing-song voice. He'd warned me the night before that we'd be leaving before sunrise today. This time I took a double dose of Tylenol to help me with the stiffness and pain and smeared half a tube's worth of the deep heat lotion on my legs. Baladio sniffed the peppermint in the air as I clambered out of my tent, and then shocked me by offering to carry my sleeping bag. Maybe the smell of peppermint makes him feel chivalrous. All I know is we had managed a nice talk over dinner the night before, on the subject of Tiger Woods (I thought Baladio resembled him), the mountains, our ages (he didn't believe I was "so old," I didn't believe he was so young, only 22 or so) and my job back home in a bakery, a panaderia. (His eyes lit up when I talked about my job, as he indicated that explained to him why I was such a "big lady.")
We started out this last day in dim light, passing the Brits' camp, mules hanging out in the middle of the road, waterfalls with slippery stepping stones, more banana and lime trees (Baladio knocked down a few for us), bright butterflies and flowers, and a cat who kept following us after Baladio picked it up for a cuddle. We also passed more houses (though still few and far between) that I noticed had hoses importing fresh water to their properties. We were definitely entering tropical terrain now, and where I had started this trek in a thick sweater with gloves on my hands and a scarf on my head, now I was down to a thin T-shirt. My muscle pain was much more tolerable as well, though I refused to breathe easy until I finished this trek alive and uninjured. Alive and uninjured, I kept repeating to myself, alive and uninjured. It was my El Choro mantra.
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| View from Japanese gardens at Casa Sandillani. |
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| At Casa Sandillani. |
The last real point of interest on the trek is a camp called Sandillani. Here everyone on the Choro trek stops if not to camp for the night then to visit an old Japanese man who lives in a rustic home that boasts probably the most lovely Japanese garden this side of the Pacific, if only for the view from the gardens. Baladio took me in to visit the Japanese man, who asks all visitors to sign in a battered old book and point out on a homemade map of the world where they come from. Then he pulls out a collection of postcards visitors have sent him from all over the world, if the world consisted solely of Paris and Belgium that is. The old man has been living out here for decades. How he ended up out here, I don't know. I don't speak his languages, Spanish and Japanese, so the opportunity to really talk to this man, even for just a few minutes, was wasted.
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| Me and the old Japanese man at Sandillani. |
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| Baladio and another banana plant, at Sandillani. |
After Sandillani, the trail gets easy in terms of descent or ascent, but rough in terms of terrain. We walk for what seems like ages over small stones with little shade and a stingy wind. Finally we begin passing a few locals on the trail, and we reach the muddy and mosquito-ey little village of Chairo, where Baladio and I, along with the two bookworm trekkers and their porters, wait for a lift into Coroico.
I am so relieved. So relieved to have made it to the end "alive and uninjured." I buy Baladio a Coke at the little shop that doubles as the van-lift stop, and then we all climb into an uncushioned, un-air-conditioned, and overall uncomfortable van to Coroico. We pass cyclists who have just made it down "The World's Most Dangerous Road"--and I think maybe they enjoyed much or more of the dangers as us trekkers, but likely not even half the adventure and beauty.
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| Me after finishing El Choro, pre-shower. That's not a tan--that's dirt. |
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| Lovely Coroico, I hardly knew ye. |
In Coroico I say goodbye to Baladio, thank him for getting me here in the end, and give him a big tip--he really earned it, what with walking 3 days through the mountains and jungle with such an untrained and poorly equipped trekker. Then I hobble to a hotel, check my blisters and shattered toenails, and finally wash off 3 days worth of dirt, sweat, swatted mosquitoes, fear, and thickly smeared-on deep heat muscle rub. I don't see much of Coroico that afternoon or evening, or the next day either, sore as I am and besotted with my hotel bed. I promise to myself I will never undertake such an adventure so ill-prepared again, for the sake of my aching knees at least. But would I do it over--same as the first time around? Hells yeah. In a heartbeat.
