| The Choro Trek (3-days from La Cumbre to Chairo near
Coroico)
At the end of my first day in La Paz I met up with five other foreigners staying in the Hostal Austria that wanted to go on ¨The Choro Trek¨ a famous Bolivian hike through the Yungas region and the
Cotapata Madidi national park. Less than 8 hours later I put my stuff in storage at the hotel front desk and was in a Micro at dawn barreling towards Villa Fatima. In the group were Swiss Germans Thomas & Caroline, Parisian Beryl, Quebecois Christine, and Danish Isabel.
In Villa Fatima we boarded a large old bus with 6 Israelis just out of military service on their world tour and headed off to La Cumbre - a high pass adjacent to La Paz at about 5,000 meters ( about 16,700 feet). On the way the bus stopped and we bought two steaming bags of ´plato paceno´ (a typical La Paz dish consisting of large beans, potatoes, corn on the cob, and slices of saganaki-like fried salty cheese with hot salsa on the side). As we ate a man boarded the bus and blessed all of us in the name of
Christ and the Virgin Mary and recited ´Our Father, who art in heaven...´ With this sustenance in our belly we exited the bus at the high lonely pass of La Cumbre. The landscape at La Cumbre is an arid, lifeless moonscape ringed by glacier-capped peaks. There is a large cross on one side of the highway and a statue of Christ with arms
outstretched on the other. At the cross stood a large group of Bolivians drinking and smoking, their laughter punctuated by the sprinkling of alcohol on the ground in front of the cross. They said they were making an offering to Pachamama (mother earth) and responded positively to my request for a blessing that our group would stay safe on the 3 day trek from La Cumbre down almost 4,000 meters to near the Yungas resort town of Coroico. It is a confusing one-hour trek across the moonscape from the statue of
Christ to where the trail begins at the actual La Cumbre highpoint 
From La Cumbre we shot ahead of the Israeli group and hiked down the wide, paved Inca road to some ruins in the valley where we had lunch and then continued on to the small hamlet of Estancia Semana Pampa, where in the heavy fog villagers watched a live football game in progress. The speed of the players at upwards of 4,000 meters (15,000 feet) is indicative of the general acclimatization and fitness of the local people. Every time we asked a villager how long it would take to get to the next landmark we could count on double that as our actual travel time. Several times along the trail we were passed by women carrying 50 kilo (110 pound) burdens and children of as young as three years old carrying their own little backpacks.
The first night we camped in the tiny village of Challapampa. About an hour before reaching the village a woman heading the same way heard me expressing my interest in learning some Aymara and motioned for me to walk with her. Juana Maria turned out to be the owner of one of the two campgrounds at Challapampa and was an excellent teacher (very patient). At this point my exhaustion was total and the fact that I almost had to jog to keep up with Juana Maria was forgotten as my first one-hour Aymara lesson monopolized my attention.
Apparently, Juana Maria at the young age of 37 has 7 surviving children, three of which live with her and 4 who live and work in
Brazil. Every weekday the children walk the grueling two hours back up the trail to Chucura where they attend school at 8:30 AM and return down the same way each night (no need to entertain the children when they return home after THAT amount of exercise). Juana Maria goes up to the village of Chocura twice a week to get the supplies she sells in her Kiosk. These supplies arrive to all the rural inhabitants of the Yungas who are more than a few hours from a road via a relay system that drives up the price of each item for each mile someone has to carry that 2
liter bottle of water on their back.
The night by the roaring river that passes though Challapampa was peaceful and full of condensation inside
everyone's tents. In the morning we all paid Juana Maria the 3 Bolivianos for each tent (about $US.50 cents) plus whatever other snack charges we had racked up at her kiosk and Juana
Maria's three cute sons Samuel, Pablo and Grobert taught me how to count to ten in
Aymara. 
For lunch we stopped just past Choro on a bluff overlooking the valley and breathed the humid oxygen-rich air of the subtropical Yungas. As we descended in altitude along our hike the land became greener and what started out as a wide-open Inca road frequently
metamorphosized into a winding, fern-choked path with large dripping leaves drooping overhead and cool dark rooms of vegetation housing dozens of beautifully-colored butterflies. Just two hours hike above our night number two camp spot the cloudy afternoon skies opened up and we were soaked in a one-hour downpour that left my socks and boots squishy bags of water. When the rain subsided I emptied a cup of water from each boot and continued on the trail barefoot down to the river Jacu-Manini where we inched across the
trail's worst bridge - two logs jammed beneath dumpster-sized boulders which spanned the rushing river rapids below.
After determining that there was no way to camp by the riverside I begrudgingly donned my wet boots and slogged up the valley wall one more hour to the Kiosko San
Francisco perched high above the surrounding valley on a ledge edged by clouds of purple flowers. At the Kiosko San
Francisco we had the pleasure of meeting Asunta, who (it became immediately
clear) spoke no Spanish. I quote Asunta here - ´´no hay castellano, pura Aymara. there is no spanish, pure
Aymara´´
The rest of the group immediately appointed me ambassador due to my ¨vast¨ knowledge of Aymara language and culture.
I was completely unable to understand anything that Asunta said beyond ´´how are you´´ and ´´what is your name.´´ Despite this we were soon happily camped and enjoying a delicious plate of potatoes and fried eggs Asunta prepared for us for 2 Bolivianos (about $US .30 cents). As well as an excellent grower of
Locoto peppers, Asunta was by far the trek's most astute businesswoman and by the time we left each of us owed her nearly twice what we paid at
Challapampa.
That night it poured and I reviewed the recordings I had made at Challapampa of Juana
Maria's language lessons to keep my mind on having to go to the bathroom but not wanting to exit the warm tent into the deluge outside.
In the morning we stopped for a break at the fruit orchard - Kiosko Bella Vista and enjoyed the ripe bananas, mandarin oranges, and cheery company of Juan the caretaker. Juan was very nice, spoke good Spanish and enthusiastically taught me some phrases of Aymara. Besides language lessons he drilled me on the health and condition of everyone else we had met along the way. It was through this conversation that I understood that despite the seeming isolation of the people we met along the trail, each was tied to each other through a system of relay information much like that which brought canned
tuna fish and pilsner beer to places like Challapampa. 
After this we descended two hours to the famous Japanese Garden campground at Sandillani owned by 30-year local resident Tajimi Hanamura and ate lunch under the Kiosko
Sandillani's pleasant cabana before heading down the last two hours to the village of Chairo where we camped in ¨the plaza¨ - a rocky area in the middle of the
town's only (and dead-end) street. That night and the next morning we became acquainted with the children of the village as they helped me set-up and take down my tent, ran screaming around the campsite, and watched with fascination as co-team-member Beryl prepared another of her fantastic breakfast camp meals. At night when we were ready to head off to bed ourselves and the children were still running wildly around our tents I asked the oldest boy what time they all go to bed, he replied ¨a las mil, at one-thousand
o'clock.¨ 
When the driver arrived with his truck Isabel took a picture of me with
Chairo's two naughtiest boys: Cara de Batan & Gonzalon.
We rode from Chairo to Coroico standing up in the back of a hired pickup truck which at various points along the way we had to get out and push. The driver was excellent and managed somehow to drive over ´´bridges´´ that looked like they were built at boy-scout camp and on mountain-ledge roads hardly wider than the truck itself. It is important to note that more than 75% of the Chairo - Coroico road was under construction and might soon be a much improved roadway.
In Coroico we stayed at the fantastic Hotel Sol y Luna, where the six of us shared a six-bed house complete with kitchen, garden, and stunning tropic highlighted-by-snow-capped-peak vista for 45 Bolivianos a night ($US 7.50)
We liked our place above Coroico so much that we stayed two nights and each day challenged ourselves with the 20 minute walk down to the village to buy ingredients for our meals.
The last day Thomas and I each bought two delicious Saltenas from Alba in
Coroico's plaza and the group went its various ways, some continuing on to Rurrenabaque and others returning four windy hours to bustling La Paz in time for a late lunch.
Aymara Lesson Number One
From the esteemed Juana Maria & sons of Challapampa, Juan of Kiosko Bella Vista, Clandestino of Kiosko Sandillani and ´El Patron´ of Chairo I learned the following useful phrases in
Aymara:
- How are you? -
Camisake!
- Good - Gualiki!
- What is your name? - Conaso Tene
Tasa?
- How much does it cost? - Cow Casa?
- The path is good - Ta kay Gauliki
- The path is not good - Ta kay Hani Gaulikiti
- The path is overgrown - Ta kay Chumin Tatawa
- How many hours to Sandillani? - Cow Ca Horatz Pererista
Sandillaneru?
- One - Maya
- Two - Paya
- Three - Quimsa
- Four - Pusi
- Five - Pisca
- Six - Sorkhta
- Seven - Po Kalco
- Eight - Quimsa Kalco
- Nine - Ya Tunc
- Ten - Tunc
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