The Wild West Still Thrives In Bolivia
(The Miami Herald) — Imagine yourself in the Wild West. Substitute burros for horses,llamas for cows, steamy jungle and treacherous mountains for endless prairies dotted with bison. Toss in some Spanish and, presto, you have Bolivia.
Had he known, John Wayne may well have come to Bolivia on vacation. So would John J. Audubon and the late Charles Kuralt of CBS. Bolivia is a cowboy’s country with few frills and fewer good roads. It is a land of adventure one step removed from the past, without warning signs or guardrails.
In Bolivia, for every sheer cliff to climb, there are hundreds of orchids to view; for every valley to cross and stream to ford, there are scores of brilliantly colored butterflies and birds. This Texas-sized country is so mountainous that if flattened with a gigantic iron, it would probably rank as one of the larger nations.
Highest airport
Superlatives here start with La Paz’s El Alto Airport. At 13,4000 feet, it is the highest airport in the world. Jet planes arriving at el Alto require a two-and-a-half mile runway to land, while propeller-driven planes must descend to reach their normal cruising altitude. La Paz itself, at 11,900 feet, is the highest capital city in the world. Thirty miles away is Lake Titicaca (12,5000 feet), the world’s highest navigable lake. Just outside the city is Molasilla, the highest 18-hole golf course (11,000 feet). Mount Chacaltaya, at 15,224 feet, is a short drive away.
Bolivia features every type of geography — some of the newest and wildest frontiers, some of the poorest roads, the oldest ruins and what is said to be the greatest concentration of cosmic rays on earth.
There is so much variety, in fact, that tourists can become as dizzy from the choices at hand as they generally become from the high altitude. One travel agent, Plaza Tours, offers nearly 100 packages, some lasting a month or more. Routine excursions stress the cosmopolitan and historical features of La Paz, Cochabamba and other mainline cities.
All about adventure
But Bolivia fundamentally is all about adventure. Best bets are fishing, trekking, mountain-climbing, camping and skiing trips. One package enables visitors to pan for gold in an ancient Inca mine. Another, "In the Footsteps of Che," traces Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara’s unsuccessful attempt to incite insurrection among Bolivian campesinos.
The coca leaf, and cocaine, are practically a cultural institution. Its use is so common, in fact, that postcards brazenly depict huge coca plantations. A full 15 percent (300,000) of all Bolivians are directly involved with the industry, according to the U.S. State Department. Most use coca leaves themselves, if only to relieve soroche, altitude sickness) and other ailments.
Those wishing to escape the lofty altitudes and low temperatures around La Paz can opt for a few days of piranha fishing in the northern lowlands. The flight from La Paz to the remote Beni region takes only about 30 minutes. On a clear day the mountain scenery can overwhelm the senses.
In the Beni itself, the vegetation is thick, the air hot and the population sparse. Fish in the Rio Bene are abundant as well as large. A bagre, the hard-fighting catfish, can top 120 pounds, while the giant Azulejo has tipped the scales at up to 450 pounds.
But it is the two-pound meat-eating piranha that has gained the most notoriety, in Bolivia as well as other parts of South America. Piranhas are the fresh water version of sharks. Cattle ranchers in remote areas are said to sometimes sacrifice individual animals to the ferocious fish in order to insure that the rest of the herd can cross safely upriver.
Using chunks of fish as bait, seven of us caught a combined total of 20 piranha and catfish. But the feast our group had looked forward to gave way to some misplaced assumptions by the chef of the Tacuara Hostel. He rationalized the serving of steaks for dinner, instead of our catch, on grounds that piranha constitute food for the common man. As guests of honor, he said, we deserved the "best."
The Tacuara Hostel is simple but clean and comfortable. A nearby disco is recommended to guests. But after a long day of fishing on the isolated river, most visitors are content to let the night slide away as they swap tales beneath a generator-powered lamp orbited by mosquitoes and other insects.
As we dug into our steaks, a tame tapir and his sidekick, a baby deer named Bambi, begged for handouts. Monkeys chattered in an adjacent tree, and a crotchety possum took after a parrot who squawked on the rafters overhead.
Our return flight to La Paz brought us to the ruins of Tawanku, the site of an ancient Inca civilization alleged in the bookChariots of the Gods to have been a landing site for aliens from outer space. Undisputed is the superior system of irrigation developed in the area over the centuries. Many of these ancient techniques are being applied again in Bolivian agriculture today.
"A half-day drive from Tawanku — across parched slopes occasionally pocked with llamas, vicunas and alpacas — took us to Lake Titicaca, where the shoreline reeds are used in the construction of distinctive boats. Long ago ocal craftsmen used these reeds to assemble the RA II, the craft used by Thor Heyrdahl in 1970 for his epic trans-Altantic voyage from Morocco to Barbados. The boats are becoming increasingly scarce as local fisherman turn to more modern vessels.
On the way back to Lap Paz we passed the Valley of the Moon, where great masses of clay, sculpted by the clear, cold wind evoked a solemn, mystic air. The mystery deepened and took on an awesome quality as the night slowly swallowed the long, jagged limestone spires and crowned them with starlight.
On the other side of La Paz are the Andes, whose average altitude is less than 20,000 feet. Ski buffs frequent slopes such as the 21,000 Mount Illimani where, according to legend, the sun was born. Skiing anywhere in this area requires plenty of endurance: Some skiers take to the higher slopes with oxygen tanks strapped to their backs.
Driving to these mountain peaks requires special endurance skills. The roads generally are tiny and often slick with ice. A little bad luck can send one’s vehicle careening down the steep slopes toward the deep valley below. Indeed, the descent at times seems almost vertical. Bolivian roads are so windy, bumpy and narrow that only skilled motorists in four-wheel-drives should make the attempt.
I did not heed my own advice, and as a result ended up slamming our jeep into a boulder that jutted out from a cliff. Luckily this happened only a few hundred feet from one of the Spartan settlements infrequently spotted along the mountain side. Four men from the village took a couple of hours to get us back on the road.
The long day’s journey came to an end as we made camp beside the river on the canyon floor. The fading blue of the sky seemed startlingly clear as we gathered twigs and broken branches for our campfire. The fire itself soon obscured the gurgle of the stream and infused this rough-hewed land with a warming glow. We knew of the low crime rate in Bolivia and the fact that there had not been a coup in six years. And we did not have the slightest fear of being bothered.
