O, Camino, Camino

A rainy Sunday morning sounds to me like a great time for a drive, so I pack the gear in the car and get going. At the end of the paved road north of La Paz, nestled beneath the 6,400m giant peak Illampu, is a magical green valley around the town of Sorata. That's what my book wants me to believe, so I drive.

This is the place to say a few words about driving in Bolivia. Adults don't hitchhike. 4-year olds hitchhike. Dogs sleep in the lane going south, but not in the lane going north. Large rocks and gravel on the road are omnipresent. There is no speed limit, but no one goes above 70mph since people can and will overtake into the oncoming traffic lane regardless of whether a vehicle is actually oncoming or not. The job of the police is to stamp a little ticket, issued on the way out of La Paz, and collect a few quarters each time a car crosses into a different province. Without the little stamps there can be big trouble...

I fly in 5th gear toward the monstrous mountain until I climb into a high snaking pass covered in fog. It's so dense that I roll down the windows so I can smell the car in front before I hit it. Despite that, I make a few measured overtakings lest I get carbon monoxide poisoning from the fuming public transport vans at their 15mph speed limit. The ground on the sides of the road turns from lunar gray to lush green in a matter of seconds. I must have entered the valley.

In the next 5 minutes the road goes from nice pavement to stone gravel and back three times, but I couldn't care less. Before me lie the most dramatic green slopes I've ever seen. This is not a valley... This is a 6,000 meter mountain that's decided it wants to go to the beach, fast! The drops at the side of the road are hundreds of meters, but the beauty of the view prevents me from dwelling on the danger. Yet, at every second bend is a fresh looking cross with flowers on it.

Soon the road is only dirt and gravel, and every five minutes it is half blocked by landslides, leaving space enough for just one car. I push on and finally enter Sorata. Perched on a sloping ridge, it's a typical mountain village. Cobbled streets wide enough for half a car, not a single street or building that is flat. The ranch I've decided to stay at is at the bottom of the valley, so somehow I need to get to the bottom of the village. As easy as that sounds, in the maze of the blocked and narrow streets, it takes me several minutes to get to the lowest avenida which should take me around the ridge to my destination. Impressed with myself, I plow through mud and piles of dirt and stones until I get to a spot where right next to a public restroom a patch of road has simply gone into an abyss a hundred meters down to the river.  I jump out and ask two old women sitting on a bench how to get to the bottom of the valley. "Camino es mal," they explain and suggest that I climb to the top of the village instead.

Their instruction makes sense to me -- a clear indication that my mind is finally starting to bend around the spoon. So I climb to a mud field in front of a church, turn right and follow the mud plunging to the bottom of the valley through two wild streams of white water. This is where the Toyota 4WD makes its dinner. A couple of dead-ends and their corresponding 5-point U-turns later, I find the ranch.

Sloping to the river, on the opposite side of the valley from the village, the ranch is a lush park set on ten acres of lawns, trees, flowers, animals and cabins on different levels. A Bolivian woman, Roxanna, shows up and welcomes me. She and her husband, Johny, moved out here 25 years ago and built the place with their own hands. I have a mojito for dinner and retreat to my cabin to watch the jungle plunge into darkness and reflect on a life without TV, phones or internet in a place where the road always changes and every day leads in a different direction.