14 Hours from Chulumani

Our final destination in the La Paz region was Chulumani. It was spent with drunks, downpours and delays and it certainly did not go the way we anticipated, but it ended up being much more fun than we ever imagined! We planned to head to Chulumani the weekend of August 24th because we knew there was a big fiesta in town but we hadn’t expected the consistent rain from the moment we got off the micro on Friday night to our departure on Sunday afternoon. I’m sure the local Coca farmers were loving it, but it wasn’t so great for our plans.

The road to Chulumani is called the North Yungas Road, twisting and turning very close to the World’s Most Dangerous Road, and almost as death defying. As soon as we turned onto the gravel section we could see the amazing drop-offs with a few vehicles lying on the valley floor below. It’s a nerve racking 4 hours! When we finally arrived, the micro dropped us off just outside of town due to the fiesta already being in full swing throughout the center. We thought the party didn’t start until Saturday!! We had been given rough directions from the plaza to our accommodation, Country House, but hadn’t expected to arrive with a full on party in the dark. I’m not sure how Wayne managed to see a small sign to the guesthouse, but we eventually found our very quaint, quirky accommodation located only 10 minutes walk from the center. Our hosts, Javier and Betty greeted us with juice and a wealth of information about the town and hiking in the area.

Chulumani is the capital of the Sud Yungas region and one of the biggest producers of legal coca in Bolivia, certainly easy to see from the drive in with hillsides full of coca plantations instead of “old school” orange groves. Not sure who decides how much of the regions coca goes into chewing versus snorting, but we did hear that the majority ends up mixed with chemicals in laboratories! It’s certainly understandable why they no longer grow oranges, coffee, etc.. with coca being very hardy and providing six crops per year and requiring only rain to thrive.

Fiesta de San Bartolomé
Chulumani has a population of 3,000, but the town swells during this riotous fiesta when folks from all the surrounding pueblos come to town to drink and dance themselves crazy. From the moment we arrived we were harassed into drinking – people were yelling at us to come over for “just one drink”, but we knew better. We were literally the only gringos in town which totally surprised us and even though Chulumani is overshadowed by Coroico in terms of tourism, we still expected other white faces. I must admit it did feel good to be the center of attention.

The celebrations started on Thursday night and were in full swing by Friday night when we arrived, with bands marching drunkenly around the plaza and people of all ages swigging from bottles of whiskey and Paceña, a popular Bolivian beer. It was very colorful with dancers and beautifully dressed Cholitas, the local Aymara indigenous women twirling their custom outfits, all finished off with top hats perched precariously atop their heads. Within minutes of our first drink Andrea was being chatted up in Spanish, or maybe Aymara and a lot of people seemed to be hanging around us. Our plan was to save ourselves for Saturday, maybe do a hike, have lunch, then enjoy the festivities in the evening – ummm, see how that works out.

We woke up Saturday morning to more rain and we weren’t sure how we were going to fill our day since hiking was out of the question. The trails were going to be muddy, the view terrible, and we didn’t bring any wet weather gear. Our only option was to head to the plaza, with Javier graciously allowing us to borrow a poncho and umbrella so off we set. I wanted to find an Internet cafe to wish my sister luck at IM Louisville but there were very few places and no 3G coverage on our phone. Luckily, we found one place open and I was able to make a Skype call! As we left the cafe we heard bands playing in the direction out of town, and having nothing else to do we decided to check it out. As we walked by a seemingly innocent shop, complete strangers hanging around outside called us over to chat. They shoved a drink in our face and the rest of the day is history! We spent 5 hours dancing, laughing, attempting to talk in Spanish, and drinking beer with our new amigos.

Wayne has never been called Amigo so many times in a day, mostly by his new found friend who couldn’t resist slobbering on him and kissing him, fortunately only on the cheek! We even got to the point where we were sharing glasses, not knowing who had drank out of them before us, and sometimes not even knowing what was being poured into them. We didn’t even care as everyone was so friendly towards the only gringos in town! Its amazing that most of these people have very little but still insisted on pushing free drinks into our hands, knowing that we were obviously wealthy tourists compared to them. I don’t feel bad as we must have bought many bottles of beer as our contribution to the celebrations.

By 4.30pm we’d had enough and the locals seemed to be falling like flies, probably only for a siesta to get themselves prepared for the evenings session. Our siesta came fast too and we crashed for three hours! The evening was a bit of an anticlimax as we were feeling messy from the afternoon – I guess we’re out of practice for these all day drinking binges! The party was going hard still with a couple of big stages set up and many people dancing and passing round bottles of beer and whiskey. Once again we were accosted, only this time it was a woman that would not take no for an answer – she insisted we have just one final drink, followed by another, and another, before we eventually made our excuses and pulled ourselves away for the night. The following morning a guy yelled at us from in front of one of the stages and it turned out to be the same guy from the night before, beer bottle still in hand and dancing on his own. These people really know how to party!

How does four become fourteen?

The Long Ride to La Paz
Our hope was to be back in La Paz at a reasonable hour which meant leaving by early afternoon, instead we were delayed and the fourteen seat micro-bus got under way at 4pm with a full load and an English speaking driver by the name of Howard. Turned out he had American citizenship and had lived in Virginia for much of his life before recently returning to Bolivia to start a new transport business. This was perfect for us as we had been allocated the seats in front with the driver and learnt many new things about Bolivia and its very corrupt president!

It should have been a sign for things to come when the spare wheel became detached from the roof and went careering down a steep hillside, unable to be retrieved. The first hour or so was fine, before clouds and fog settled in making for an interesting drive along the already dangerous North Yungas road – luckily we had full confidence in our driver and his single front headlight. It could have been far worse as his driver who should have been taking us was plastered back in Chulumani!

Around three hours into the drive was the turn onto the paved highway coming from Coroico, Rurrenabaque and other lowland areas. We were now only a little over an hour from the center of La Paz and around twenty kilometers from the high point of La Cumbre Pass, although unbeknown to us the vehicle lights we could see in the distance would really throw a spanner in the works for us arriving home anytime soon! We quickly got to within a couple of kilometers of the pass at a dizzy 4.700 meters when we came to a STOP – we soon realized that when its been raining in the tropics its probably been snowing in the mountains, and with snow comes ice. We are very environmentally friendly and also know that there is a heck of a lot of salt in the south of Bolivia, where just a little of the stuff would have prevented what we were about to suffer through for the next ten hours.

If it hadn’t been so damn cold out we could have walked the three kilometers in under an hour – La Paz seemed so close but might as well have been five hundred miles away! To make matters worse Wayne had a perfectly timed dose of the runs, and having already gone a while since a bathroom was available desperation soon got the better and he chose to squat next to a crash barrier in full view of a bus and other motorists. What a perfect photo opportunity if it hadn’t been so dark! We dosed, we woke, we inched forward, we stopped, Wayne went for a walk to see how things were going in front of us, we dosed, we woke, repeat, repeat continually until 4.30am. Seeing the La Cumbre sign was a blessing and we knew from here it was all downhill, and even with icy patches there was nothing else to hold us up. Howard dropped us off close to our apartment and by 5.30am we were turning the key in the door, finally!

We had the most amazing time with great people, totally irrelevant of wealth and differences.