town of Sorata, which is about four hours from La Paz, to the north.
"Yunga" is a Quechua word that means "jungle," although the region is
actually the Eastern slope of the Andes--not quite Jungle yet (although
someone who knows more about the definition of jungle might disagree
with me).
The trip to Sorata (as with all third-world travel) was a little
nerve-wracking, but everything went off without a hitch.
The bus leaves from the Cemetery district in La Paz, site of the (you
guessed it) La Paz General Cemetery. I had walked up to that part of
town the day before, just to make sure I knew where I was going, though
in the end, I took a taxi--just too far to walk in the midst of the
crowds of the La Paz "Black Market" district, which isn't quite as shady
as it sounds, but is nevertheless a pretty good place to go if you're
looking for the experience of getting pickpocketed.
The "bus" turned out to be a van--a combi--and the trip turned out to be
pretty close to the four hours the Lonely Planet says. The price was 15
Bolivianos, which is about two dollars at the current exchange rate.
Sorata is, incidentally, a minor tourist center with reasonable
facilities (which makes me feel guilty), but it's right on the
regression line, which makes it a good place to see.
The truth is, though, that "reasonable facilities" still means I need to
use my screw-in electric socket plug adapter to use my computer in my
room, so maybe I shouldn't feel so bad?
The trip out first goes through urban La Paz and the city of El Alto.
El Alto, which means "The High One" or something like that, bills itself
as "The Aymara Capital of the World," and also a pretty good place to
get ripped off if you don't keep your eyes open. Not that being
predominantly Aymara has anything to do with the shadiness of the
place. It's a very poor industrial city with a very high rate of
unemployment. And frankly, the people who would rip you off could
probably really use the $45 they could get for your camera. Not that
I've ever actually spent any time there (so take everything I say here
with a grain or two of salt).
One thing I can vouch for from personal experience, however, is the
beauty of the Altiplano from both El Alto and beyond. The road out to
Sorata runs Death Valley straight, passing by picturesque (though dusty)
villages and beautiful glaciated peaks that pop up a couple thousand
meters above already ridiculously-high La Paz. After about two and a
half hours, the road, drops precipitously down into the Yungas,
switchbacking down a narrow road that is, at least, mostly paved.
Perhaps the most disconcerting part of the trip is not the steepness of
the descent, but the propensity of other drivers to pass on blind
corners on a road that probably should only have one lane in the first
place, and where a miscalculation of a foot or two could send you a
couple hundred feet (at least) down. Our driver was good, but I
wondered what the passengers in the other vehicles thought.
Sorata itself is perched on a steep hillside, and the route to my hostel
from town takes me down an eroding path at about 50 degrees and across a
footbridge at the bottom of a narrow ravine. The town seems to have as
many stairways (named as streets) as paved roads.
It's very beautiful, although also very muddy, because it rained most of
the day.
The view from the hostel, and the views from town, are really quite
breathtaking, and remind me a lot of Guatemala, with partially wooded
hillsides and tiny villages and tiny agricultural plots stretching down
the valley, to the mining zone further down, on the edge of the jungle.
There is some tourism here, and it's a well-known area for backpacking
and hiking, but the biggest part of the economy (and the biggest source
of municipal revenue) comes from mining, and most of the population is
still engaged in agriculture, somewhere near the subsistence level.
The place where I'm staying has no internet, and in fact, has no phone,
so it will be a couple of days before this gets posted. In the
meantime, I will be doing interviews and writing two papers for the
ISNIE conference in about three weeks.
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