La Paz to La Paz, and Choro Trek in between

Holla amigos!

This one will be in english! And it´s Selena making an effort here! (Yes, I have been slacking off... Well, I´m on vacation you know.) Jess left off in La Paz, so here is what´s happened.

We left our smelly cheap Tropical Alojamiento at 7:30 am Monday morning, and went to our meeting point with our guide. His name is Guzmán, he is about 40 and comes from one of the villages we´ll be going through during the trek. He meets us a little bit late, making me slightly nervous he might have received 50% of the money, in exchange for 0% of the service. Yet I´m wrong, and I´m quite happy to be! We walk around to get a couple more things before leaving for his house in Villa Fatima (a section of La Paz from where the bus leaves to La Cumbre, our departure point) We are offered tea at his house, meat 2 of his 4 children(there is no S after children, Brrram!) and find out his wife will acompany us until we reach her old village. Jess and I are a little ticked off because we have only a few bolivianos left on us and can´t buy the things we need... We bought a lot of things the day before, assuming that the guide would pay his share or pitch in elsewhere, but he just won´t do it, and we can´t get fruits and other foods we think we need, but we have HIS meals... Anyway, we have to get over it. We take the bus to the beginning of the trail and get started. It´s 10:45am and the camera is turned on. Jess will be practicing her photographic skills for the next 3 days!

The trail goes up for an hour, and we are told to slow down, to make sure we won´t get altitude sickness. Both our packs are relatively light (between 12 and 14 kg) and it goes pretty smooth. In the first 15min, we meet up with a German guy who got mixed up with the snow covered trails... He backtracks, follows us for a few minutes and takes off on his own. He walks fast! In a few hours, it´s a whole lot warmer around us. We left the snow peaks to reach a somewhat tropical climate. There, people survive on potato cultivation. I even realize something of great interest to me: the person I know who eats the most "papas" is my papa! That´s it, I have solved the mistery of the potato obsession of my dad!

At a certain point during the first few hours, we have to pay a trail maintenance fee and Guzmán told us he knew the guy and we would only pay half the fee... the interesting thing is that we have to convince the guy that we are students living in La Paz, and not "strangers"... The way we are dressed, our hairdos, our obvious accent and lack of spanish language... everything betrays us. Yet, I look the guys square in the eyes and say we are from Sucre, in Villa Armonia, and study in La Paz. And yes, we are Bolivianos. It´s hard not to laugh... but he buys it! Anyway, we pay half the fare. After that, I feel like a reel Bolivian... they are always lying.

We leave Guzmán´s wife at her birthplace and the pace accelerates. We chat with him about a few different things, and find out the trail has just been cleaned up (which means the overgrowth was cut back) less than 2 weeks ago. An enormous amount of people will be passing through the following week, for the holy week. It´s their pelegrimage, they do it in two days I believe. So I am quite happy we get both the best trail condition and the least traffic. Well of course, we almost get run over by a pack of llamas and the road gets animal traffic jams, but people wise, no one is there. It´s just beautiful! We pass villages and campspots and end our day at a nice site where Jade´s tent finds a beautiful refuge. We make Ramens and soup for dinner and go to bed quite early. It wasn´t a long day, but our first full days´worth of exercice for a while.

We should be having breakfast at 7am, but I guess we choose to ignore the alarm and consequently, don´t leave until 8:30am... Except for a mention the next morning, it doesn´t seem to make a difference. We walk fast and reach the next "town" (I wonder if 50 people live there) in 2.5hours. It starts to rain, so we call it tea time and warm up some water. Christian, the German guy who had gotten confused at the beginning of the trip, joins us for a warm drink and we talk for the next hour, until the rain quiets down. He really enjoys Bolivia and tell us of a few thing of interest. He even offers to give us a book on trekking in Bolivia and Peru. We´ll take it after you´re done with this trek, we say, but we don´t know we won´t see each other again... too bad, it seemed better than our guidebook.

We start again after an hour, the rain actually stopped, and walk the next 4.5hours with a stop late afternoon, when we eat some lunch. I meet a beautiful, absolutely Jack ass cat, who learnt to beg tourists, I swear! I admit I even lost patience and threw him off the bench... well I feel a little sorry for that, he didn´t get hurt, but he didn´t fall on his 4 legs. Sorry! We spent the night at a campsite called Bella Vista. And left earlier the next morning to start our day. At that point, the climate was a lot warmer, and the humidity, way heavier. We didn´t have much more walking to do until reaching the road taking us to Coroico, but given we were the third day... with bags and food and water (by the way, the water filter is excellent Jade!), it felt like every 20minutes should count as an hour. No traffic took us from the road intersection with our trail, so we had to walk another 40 minutes to the nearest transit meeting point. We eventually made it and had to fight a warm coozy sleep in the micro (bus) taking us up to Coroico.

At that point, I was a bit annoyed with the guide... He refused a 50$ bill because there was a tiny crack in it... 2mm long. So, quite anxious to pay him and get raid of him, I found a way to access money in a town without compatible ATM to either Jess´ or my bank cards. Visa is the solution!

Than he took off and we met this beautiful lady advertizing an all natural and all vegetarian place where we can stay the night. We get her price down to 20 bolivianoes a person a night. It´s worth a whole lot more than that, we can say for sure! We get a simple yet beautiful room, spend the next while showering and choosing what we´ll be eating... We are soooo hungry! We get 3 plates! Well, 2 and a huge salad. It´s amazing. We might be full after the meal, but an hour later, I would eat just as much if I listened to my stomac! We go to internet, come back just in time for yoga... The lady practices yoga everyday, so we join her. It´s a bit different, but worth the time we put in it. (I never stretched, so I´m really sore...) Then it´s bed time. I wake up somewhat early, decide on breakfast and do laundry. It´s day two and we said we wouldn´t stay more than a night so we have to swich room with some girls who plan on staying a while. I don´t mind. We transfer our things and order lunch. I have so many mosquito stings and fly bites that I am becomming slightly paranoïd.. Jess has to argue for us to eat outside! I bail and we do that.

My laundry is drying and takes a sweet ass time doing so... so my socks, all of them, are out of use and I can´t put my boots without socks in them... so I walk barefoot to the village and buy sandals there. (I tried to get jess to put on my boots until I buy socks... but after 2 minutes looking at her enormous feet, she says she rather go bare socks to the village than wear them!!!) What you guys don´t know is that Jess wears 6 and my boots are 11.5!!! I can´t stop laughing thinking about it!

Once in the village, I treat myself to a nice espresso and Jess surfs the net in search of immigration information. The information we get (and the fly bites) convince us that our time in Bolivia is over except for Isla del Sol at the border with Peru. So we´ll leave the next morning and cross the border to be alowed enough time to visit the island and do a trek we know of to get there. We´ll start making our way north from that moment on. Back to Villa Bonita (our vegetarian heaven in Bolivia) we make ourselves a salad with poached eggs... we can´t keep on buying every meal from there little resto, it´ll cost too much after a while! Dinner is a success and soon after we fall asleep. Jess is reading Cara sucia, a book she had bought but lost and they have it at the residence. I am obviously playing sudoku. Eventually, someone, half asleep, closes the light and bey bey, we are asleep. I wake up with the sunrise and get breakfast ready. We know we´ll be leaving for La Paz right away and choose to enjoy a nice milk shake before leaving paradise... (They make their own all natural gelato.) To my pleasure, James Blunt´s "Goodbey my lover" is playing as we sip on our drink and get ready to leave. (He doesn´t play here, but I guess the other girls put his CD on.) Anotherone of my pleasures is that Jess requests the receipe for the Lentil patties we ate twice during our stay. They grant our wish and I start to believe we might eat more complete vegetarian food until the end of our trip! Finally!

So we leave for La Paz with lentils and all we need to make decent food and 3 hours later get to our stinky cheap hotel. We retrieve our bag of stuff left behind and get a room for the night. A bit of walking around later, we stop in a great little joint, and spend the next 2 or 3 hours drawing and writting letters... Jess is having a great time, since I´m happy drawing away the Museo the San Francisco, she can do all she wants and I won´t say a thing... The bill comes to 50bs just for what is ordered! and many many postcards later, there is a little sales lady who loves Jessica! Ho well, there are days like that. When she´s done, she can´t stay still, so we come straight here, to update the blog.

And I did it... If you read this all the way, congratulation! I made it quite long.. And Jess´version is different if you want to read on! Give you some more news soon. I think!!