After we recovered in La Paz, we had about 5 days to `spare` before we had to be in Cusco. We decided that hiking was out of the question (again sigh) since I was a snot factory and the dodgy chicken sandwich was after aflicting us both with an unease at being far from public toilets plus carrying a pack and eating camping food on an already quesy belly is no fun.
Chulumani was decided as our next destination. Its similar to Coroico (of death road and mountain bike fame but we didn´t really fancy falling into another tourist trap and figured that the death road was probably way easier then any biking we´d done for free in Aussie - memories of wiseman´s ferry and the great northern road which nearly led to overheating a couple of years ago pop to mind!). So off we headed on sunday. The bus is a local bus from Villa Fatima in La Paz. It goes when its full and whilst you wait you get the opportunity to sample local `delicacies´ - dunno what any of it was but we refrained.
The bus drive is incredible. Ascending out of La Paz over a high pass (must be 4500m) surrounded by massive peaks of granite like cliffs and small glaciers and fantastic looking side valleys, the bus then starts the looooonnnggg descent into Chulumani. Most of the road is not paved ie its gravel/dust and clings (seriously it defies belief) to the side of the valley walls. Since I´m afraid of heights sitting next to the window was NOT a good idea. Of course at the start, we saw them retrieving a 4WD from down one of the many preciptious cliffs along the road .. afterwards we found out 2 people survived ... dunno how many didn´t tho but in the last year 240 people have died on this 120km stretch of road. We also had picked a really busy day to travel as it was a long w-e and all the La Pazians were heading back up the valley against us. Some of them have obviously NEVER driven anything wider then a bike. Thankfully the bus driver was a steady and careful driver (most of the time) and always made sure the bus was perched safely on the side of the road with at least 2-3 inches to spare. He even stopped the engine and got out once and refused to back up when this silly 4WD refused to go back. Behind us was a 150m chasm!! So 4 hours later we had descended down to a least 1200m and then back upto Chulumani at 1700m, and I had used up more adrenalin then all the trip so far! The scenery was amazing thou. Massive peaks towering overhead, waterfalls, cloudforest, coca fields perched in seemingly impossible locations.
We stayed in the Country House Hotel (50 bolivianos pp) with Xavier as our very hospitable, informative and great cook! Its a really nice place to relax and we spent the afternoon sitting in the reading room, overlooking the mountains, sipping beer. Ahhhh its tough being a backpacker sometimes! We eat dinner and breakfast at the hostel and it was soooo good. Dinner (40 bolivianos pp ie 4eur!) was always some great stew with potatos (droool), quinoa or rice, plenty of bread and salads, dessert and of course beer (not included). Brekkie was bread with local honey and home made jam, loads of tea, sandwiches, fruit, juice, omelettes and yoghurt ... ahhhh so good! We didn´t need to worry about lunch!
The first full day we did a walk down and into the valley exploring some streams and seeing the local farmers planting coca, banana or coffee crops. The next day we climbed to the top of the hills for a fantastic view. On both days saw heaps of birds (more hummingbirds and parrots!) and butterflies, no traffic and just a few locals. Would highly recommend Chulumani for the scenic (even if scary) drive in, the walking (well its more like rambling about really) and relaxing in the hostel above! If your looking for anything else tho you wont find it in Chulumani!
On the downside, coca is a major growth plant in the valley which unfortunately means a lot of the cloudforest is being destroyed to allow farmers to met the demands for coca. Allegedly there´s 300 trucks of coca leaves a night leave the valley and its under constant satellite supervision by the US: its hard to know how much of this is true but it does seem like there is coca plots everywhere!! The coca is made into cocaine elsewhere and allegedly most of the locals dont even know what cocaine looks like. In fairness why bother cos they chew huge amounts of coca!! Heard lots of other conspiracies and rumours but hard to know whats going on just pretty sad to see the cloudforest getting destroyed so rapidly.
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