No, honestly. There is a town with such a name.
But after encountering names like Woergl, Vomp, Kathmandu, and Figuig throughout the world, I suppose what’s another odd-named town in the middle of nowhere.
We decide to leave town for the carnival weekend—in the meantime, we tell ourselves, let other people crowd the streets of Oruru, get sloshed, and soaked by the locals’ foam pistols (more like foam machine guns) for the little bit of action they actually get to witness (not to mention what will turn out to be pouring rain later, as we can deduct from the TV). All right, so Liebi and I are really just jealous about not going to Oruro. But you might want to think twice before dragging two kids along for such a ride. In the end, you will wonder what you got all excited about and you will have to listen to the kids’ constant inquiries less than five minutes into the festivities about when they can go back to the hotel.
So we booked a room at the Hotel Andino for a couple of days, which pleases the kids to no end. The word hotel is now the magic word for the kids and their little heads hit the ceiling when we tell them. This means more playgrounds, probably a pool, and sleeping in the same room with their parents.
Macapaca is a thirty minute drive from La Paz and leads you through more gorges, more mountains, more rivers, and more straight-out-of-National Geographic snapshots. The kids fall asleep in the car, and it appears that will be their nap for the day.
At Andino, a nice hotel tucked in the valley surrounded by rivers and mountains, we check in and go through the usual kid-pleasing routines: pool, followed by smaller pool, followed by playground, and finally ice cream. Somebody once told me that they saw mold growing on our kids, and that’s not too far removed from the truth, because they really are spoiled.
The real highlight does not happen until the next morning when we hike up a nearby mountain with, get this, all 15 stations of the cross. We hike through Macapaca, reach station numero uno at the bottom of the hill and climb, climb, climb until we reach station number 15 at the top of the hill. So, you tell yourself that’s what it was like to hike up a mountain with a cross on your back. The kids are absolute troopers and make the hike with us, with a few scattered sitting breaks in between. When we reach the town of Macapaca again, it’s time for ice cream for the kids, which is really well deserved.
We have a lazy day that Sunday for the most part and head out the next morning. The kids are less than thrilled to leave, and we return to La Paz that has been flooded by severe rains and sewer overflows in the meantime.
“Are we going to the airport, Papa?” Bash asks, his big blue eyes almost popping out of his head with excitement.
“Why the airport?” I ask him.
“To go to the next hotel,” he says.
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