La Paz and The Choro Trek

Arriving in La Paz, from Copacabana was actually quite surprising. Having not done much research on the city it was amazing to see how massive it was in comparison to Cusco. They even have skyscrapers! At 3,650m (11,975ft) La Paz is the highest capitol city in the world, and the highest I’d ever been without being in an airplane. Upon arrival, we took a cab to a popular hostel that I will not give the name of, because although they are great at what they do, I’m about to bash it. Not just this hostel, but popular tourist party hostels in general.

After our fair share of these types of places in Cusco, and few days at this place in La Paz, which seemed to be even a step up, we decided that this was not the way we wanted to travel. To hop around from party hostel to party hostel is a good way to spend twice as much money as you have and miss out on at least half of what any place has to offer culturally. It’s like a big vacation where people spend day and night in a well-kept English-speaking oasis where they eat like kings, drink at all hours of the day, and leave the hostel only for tourist excursions organized by the in house travel agencies.

We packed up after two night and headed off in search of something a little more modest that wouldn’t break the bank. What we found was a perfect place to make base; our own room with 2 beds, Wi-Fi, a shared outdoor seating area and a kitchen at our disposal. The hostel was run by a family that lived on the top floor and there weren’t many people staying there. Besides us, there was a group of hippies that practiced juggling and accordion playing all day. We spent a few days here relaxing and researching before heading out on our first multi-day trek of the trip, The Choro Trek.

 The Choro Trek is a 3 day trek that is best to do out of La Paz. We hitched a taxi to the trail head (located even higher in altitude than La Paz.) The trek is known to be one of the best in Bolivia and offers a wide variety of altitude and scenery.

 After the hour ride out from La Paz and some horrible directions from a guy at the ranger station, we got off to a shaky start. Less then half an hour into the trek we took a wrong turn. An error that took us about an hour hike down the side of a mountain before realizing, and a long tiring hike back up.  When we got back to the point we had turned wrong we discovered that we had to go even further up the mountain and down the other side. Our little misshape had taken us at least two hours out of our way and we were crunched for time if we wanted to make it to one of the campsites on time.

On the bright side, going down the wrong side of the mountain gave us a beautiful view that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen. Being so high up, there was very little vegetation. The mountains seemed to be made of slate ranging in color from red to blue, brown, and green. And there were lamas everywhere! As we made our way down the other side (the correct side) we were literally in the clouds. You couldn’t see very far in front of you and we were walking a long the edge of a cliff. It was very cold up there and a bit eerie. As we made our way down we discovered that we were in a lush, green river valley with mountain walls towering over us on either side. The valley descended gradually off into the distance. This is where we would be spending the majority of the trek.

For the rest of that first day the trail was more like a sidewalk. There were stones laid out on the ground for miles and a little stonewall along the trail. The Choro trail was a passageway created by the Incans sometime before the Spanish took over, so these stones were very old and had been there for a long time. It was interesting to think about how many people had walked the trail we were walking, and who.

At around 5:30 on the first evening we arrived in a little town in the valley. This place was literally in the middle of nowhere and it was the only town we would come across for the entire trek. We had originally planned to walk through and continue on about 2 hours to the designated camp spot but because of our mishap at the beginning, daylight wouldn’t allow it. We were able to camp in the schoolyard right along the river, which made for an interesting experience.

We were approached by several curious kids while setting up camp and making dinner. They would come very close and just stand there without saying a word, watching what we were doing. Some of them wanted food. Although they didn’t have a food shortage there, a lot of kids have become accustomed to begging. The trekkers give them food they don’t have in their village. The begging seemed to be out of curiosity rather than hunger.

The next morning we took down camp and headed off again as soon as the sun woke us up. The second day was undoubtedly the most difficult. We had trekked 7 hours the day before, our first time going any real distance with our packs, and we were sore all over. It got a little better once we got going, but I was finding it hard to breath the entire day. It didn’t help that the trail started heading up out of the valley and zigzagged up and down through the surrounding mountains. Although the trek takes you down several hundreds of meters in elevation, we had to do a lot of climbing in order to pass through the mountains. Day two was very hot as well. I was sweating more than I had in a long time.

At one point when we were down by the river, Mike and I decided to rest for a while and try to go for a swim. The river was descending   through the valley so the water was moving really fast, but there were a lot of big rocks. In this particular spot the rocks had formed a kind of pool, were the flow was gentle enough so that we wouldn’t get taken away. The water was very cold but so refreshing. We go all the way in and stayed in, splashing around for about 5 minutes. It was a well-needed cool off. We filled our bottles there and treated them with our purification pills. It was some of the freshest water I’ve ever tasted. From there we had about another 3-hour walk up a mountain to where we would spend the night, “Buena Vista.”

Buena Vista means, “beautiful view.” It was just one family’s home, located high up on a mountain overlooking the valley. We were several kilometers from anything in either direction. When we arrived there was a man and his two young daughters. Mike and I were exhausted when we arrived and the two girls gravitated to us when we sat down to rest…and when we set up camp, and when we cooked dinner, and as we walked back and forth across the yard between the tent and the cook stove. They were very happy to have some new entertainment.

The pair weren’t vey talkative at first. They would just stand very close to us and watch what we were doing. There were a bunch of chickens running around in the grass that were trying to get at the food we were making. The girls would chase them away, pulling out their feathers and giggling. They picked them up and threw them a few times. We learned that they were both 6 years old. They were twins! Mike and I are twins as well so they thought that was pretty cool.

I pulled out my big fancy camera after dinner and was showing them how it worked, which was really fun. They were smudging up the lens, were barley able to hold it up to their faces, and when I’d wrap the strap around their necks it would just fall off their shoulders and around their waists. I didn’t care though. They were having such a fun time. I was showing them how to make movies and they were doing little recordings of each other. They were learning how to work it very fast. Every time I had the camera one of them was either trying to show me some flowers, making a face, or flipping out in the yard. We had a good time for hours, until the sun went down and Mike and I headed into out tent to rest up for the night.

It interesting to think of how different their life must be. These little girls spend all of their time in their own backyard, nowhere near other people, a school, or even a road. They spend their days wrestling, chasing chickens, and riding flattened plastic bottles down a hill. They had an older sister. She looked about twelve and she came in from the trail as the sun was going down with a sack over her shoulder. She didn’t talk to us as much, but I assumed that she must have been gone for a few days, and that whatever was in the sack was something the family needed to make there living. These girls would grow up to be just like their parents; chopping chicken for food and wood for fire.  It’s strange to think about all the different worlds a child can be born into.

The next morning the rain was pouring. It felt great for a few hours. It was amazing how much the scenery had changed throughout the trek. On day one we were in rocky, barren mountains in the clouds and by day three we were in a lush wet jungle with cascading waterfalls and an abundance of vegetation. By day three we had it down. The same bags that where killing us the past two days didn’t fell all that bad. The queasy breathless feeling I’d had the day before was gone. We still felt sore, but stronger. We walked hard and fast that day, sometimes deep in conversation and other times deep in thought. There wasn’t much room to think about the effort we were putting in so the day went by pretty fast.

We took one break that day in the mid afternoon to make lunch. There was a group of little wood buildings at one point along the trail, someone’s property. The only people around were a bunch of little kids. The oldest girl looked like she might have been 11 and she was wearing a backwards baseball hat. We thought that the parents must have been gone getting something and this girl was in charge. They reminded me of the lost boys from peter pan. There were a bunch of little sheds built up from slop lumber and these kids were running around in the rain playing some made up game. They sold us some canned meat and we mixed it in with our rice and onion.

After lunch we finished up the trek in what seemed like no time. We arrived in a little town called Chairo by mid afternoon and took a taxi bus about an hour up the mountain to Coroico, a well-populated city with a great view of the valley we had just hiked through.  We spent one night in town before heading back to La Paz to prepare for our next adventure.  For being out first real trek, I would say it was a great success and I’d recommend it for anyone traveling through Bolivia.