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Other entries in Coroico

Paths of Doom 2

We're all packed into the minibus, bags strapped precariously to the roof and we're just waiting on the driver. As the minutes tick by, it starts to become obvious that he's not coming, that he is in fact passed out on the floor of a pub in a pool of his own urine and won't be operating any heavy machinery today. It's eleven in the morning. So we change buses, everyone out, bags off and all pile into another van, rather than the slightly more practical option of having the (allegedly sober) chofer climb aboard our now abandoned machine. It all just adds a little to the carnaval atmosphere, the whole wondering if it'll be your last day on earth, but I'm not worried. Much.

As luck would have it, the driver is the only teetotaller in the vicinity and an extemely careful man to boot. This is evidenced by the fact that buses are screaming past us on blind bends, and we're only on the outskirts of La Paz, three hours from destiny. It's a pleasant road to start with, pretty wide by all accounts, with decent visibility, and it's beginning to seem as though the reports of weekly deaths and annual carnage statistics in triple figures are widely exaggerated. It's not long, though, before the scenery changes dramatically and we start the rapid descent through thickening fog on an increasingly narrow stretch of road. As it begins to wind, corkscrew-like, ever downwards towards Coroico, the path doubles back on itself in a series of supermodel-skinny blind bends, a couple of which are beautified by waterfalls pouring off the cliffside onto the road. On this particular piece of low-way, driving trends are reversed and so we hug the left hand side of the road, the sheer drop into the nothingness mercifully hidden by an eiderdown of comforting fog, as to our right buses come thundering up, scraping the cliff-face. Two streams obscure the way at the exits of a couple of hairy bends, and we get a couple of soakings through the open windows as the bus gushes through - slowing down here means getting stuck for an indefinite period, and nobody wants that. Once the waterfalls have ceased and we've succesfully navigated a broken down jeep and a big bus with a puncture, it's plain sailing all the way to Coroico. Apart from a morose moment when the fog lifts and the carcasses of a couple of long-dead buses come into view, far below in the valley. On the cliff side of the road, a lengthy series of crosses lists the names of the victims of Death Road, the most recent that of a French girl who went hurtling off the track on her rented bike, at Death Corner. For once, the grandiose placenames seem strangely impotent.

Coroico's a fairly small village where wealthy paceños (folks from the big smoke) come to pass leisurely weekends away from the grime and poverty of La Paz, and as we descend in the main square we're approached by a chubby chap with a pile of brochures offering us a room in a luxurious complex ten minutes up the road, complete with swimming pool, bar and parrot (the parrot seemed to be a big selling point for him, for some reason). First, we needed to find Fred, a French-Canadian with a passing resemblance to Jack from Lost who's been known to eat bear meat when really hungry. He'd taken another bus from La Paz at the same time as us, and we were kind of hoping to see him again in the flesh, rather than in a grainy obituary photo. All was well, and Fred lived, and we set about finding the swankiest suite for our shekels, with brochure-boy trailing forlornly behind us. We eventually went with him to see the place, Don Quijote, and it was admittedly rather grand, at a very nice price, though a little distant from the town centre. We're greedy though, and want more for less, and the hostelier is in an understandably foul mood as he drives us back to town. Having checked a few places closer to the village, none is really standing out, and as I'm starving and don't particularly want to die of hunger now, having breezed through the ultimate test in road survival, Fred volunteers to go check some of the more far-flung resorts while we dine on worm-riddled soup and sad-looking schnitzels. Our wires get crossed somehow, and he figures we've headed back to Don Quijote and so books himself into the nearest and undearest of the smaller hostels in town. When we meet up and realise the confusion, we decide it's best to stick together and just throw the bags down somewhere for the night. The somewhere is an unglorious crack-shack, paint peeling and a business of flies on the ceiling, the kind of place unloved sales reps come to end their days with a leather belt and a ceiling fan. Except there's no fan, just the incessant buzzing of our winged roommates. At least it's cheap, we say, a whole 70 cents cheaper than the suite with the pool. Tomorrow we'll do better.

And so we do, as a new guy approaches us and offers us an even sweller place than Don Q, only three minutes from the square, for the same price. Now, this was the day we meant to take the bus to the jungle, but as it was officially the last day of carnaval, absolutely nothing was running (tip: don't plan anything in the approximte vicinity of mardi gras), so we were staying put, but this time in proper luxury. We hooked up with a Frenchman and a Bolivian and spent 24 hours in colonial bliss, sipping long drinks on the balcony and eating perfectly-cooked 90-cent fillet steaks in between bouts on the diving board.

That brief moment of luxury behind us, we began the hard slog to the rain forest, invovling much waiting and hoping for buses running on an inexistent schedule (it might be here at two, or tomorrow at four, depending on what the drivers have been doing). At four, over a sparkling new bridge, came a wheezing blue machine with two spare seats, heading for Rurrenabaque. The bridge, it turns out, forms the last part of the brand new, broad, smooth, asphalted road from La Paz, replete with aqueducts and wide, slow bends. It sees about four vehicles a day, to the Road of Death's hundred-odd, because it takes a full thirty minutes more and costs about a dollar extra in petrol. The value of human life seems to lie somewhere between that of an earthworm and a 401k plan round these here parts.

Sixteen hours of bone-shattering crawling over atrocious roads, on freelance seats who dislodge themselves at will from their holdings, with similarly independently-minded windows opening and shutting willy-nilly lie ahead, and as we trundle over the Road of Serious Injury Requiring Lengthy Hospitalisation, the Road of Deep Gashes and Mild Concussion and the Road of A Few Cuts and Bruises But No Need For Surgical Intervention, the vague idea of taking an aeroplane back to La Paz starts to take on the shape of a definite plan. As we break down in the pitch dark at 1am, we're mentally filling out ticket applications and as we finally come to a shuddering halt in Rurrenabaque, we know it's the last time we'll ride this road.

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