Contrary to what some people have suggested, I no longer do cartwheels, jumping jacks, and whiskey shots in celebration before I am about to visit another major city. Don’t get me wrong here. There are places in South America – Rio and Santiago – that I would like to see very much, although these don’t compare to the inland trips within Bolivia. Nothing beats a well-timed inland tour, especially if you can drive it.
During Thanksgiving, immediately after the census, we pack up the Pilot and head for Coroico, a vibrant small town (a village by European standards) about three hours from here off the autoruta 3.
We pack our stuff and leave La Paz at 11:24 sharp, the kids cheerfully singing along to the Who songs in the back, and the driving instructions tucked away in my side pocket on the driver’s side. What I don’t count on is that within an hour I will still be in La Paz, owing to the city’s size and the madness of traffic accompanying me once we hit downtown. One hour of stop and go, stop and go, maneuvers that used to make me gag or even worse when I was a kid. Knowing that the kids inherited my motion sickness gene, I take it easy on the brakes, making sure I creep ahead steadily, even if most cars that look like they have been fished out of a gutter are passing me left and right. Remember – we live in the southern part of town and will have to exit through the north, which means we will see all of La Paz in its wonderful albeit familiar splendor before hitting Ruta 3.
Of course there is no such thing as a national road without a national toll that will demand that you pay for the pleasure of driving on a road with fewer potholes. I pay seven and a half Bolivianos (a little more than a dollar, after all) before I can even cover one square inch of tar outside of La Paz.
It is money well spent.
I doubt there are many roads anywhere as scenic as the Ruta 3 – there are endless barren hills at first rising at each side of the road, followed by the Andes mountains with the greenest grass and the most pristine waterfalls. At times, we are so high up we drive directly into clouds, their misty rain gently tapping on our windshield. Herds of lamas grazing on both sides are another subtle reminder that you could only be on one continent - Latin America, in the Andes.
I take extra good care not to speed so as not to make the kids sick and so I can enjoy the scenery myself. There are more curves in Ruta 3 than in a rollercoaster, and I understand that there are at least two more hours of this ahead of me. So be it, I am thinking. I’ll even take three and a half hours if that means that the kids will reach their destination rejuvenated and without feeling too ill.
This is the first time we drive through tunnels in Bolivia – some of them without any functioning lights. Even our headlights don’t do us any good, and I creep steadily through some of them, anticipating that literal light at the end of the tunnel and hoping it is exactly that and not the headlights of some lorry.
We eventually leave Ruta 3 and take a dirt road that takes us up the hill and into Coroico, our eventual destination. Liebi and I laugh at three or four different Bienvenidos signs on the way to Coroico, while buses and lorries somehow shoot past us, unimpressed by the billboards welcoming them to this obvious tourists’ destination.
After some guard snags another few Bolivianos from us for some toll or tax we are unaware of, we are free to proverbially elbow our way in the Pilot through Coroico to our hotel, which is on the other side of town. Driving through town, Coroico reminds me of a little village in Italy and Spain – the roads are much too narrow, and there is one rectangular plaza in the middle of town where everybody meets and any building of importance (city hall, church) is located.
Little do we know that we have just descended one mile into an area that would have attributes entirely different from the capital city to the south.
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