Coroico

4th - 6th June 2008

Coroico is perched on a hill at 1760m amid beautiful scenery. The hillside is covered with orange and banana groves; coffee is also grown and condors circle overhead.

Our room had an amazing view as you can see here to the right, and at 80bvs for the room was another bargain!

After the altitude and the cold temperatures of the past few weeks, Coroico was a breath of fresh, warm air! The sleepy little town had a nice feel about it and we spent our full day there by heading off in search of the waterfall which supplies the town’s water supplies. The waterfall proved illusive; however on the way back from our walk we bumped into Jose and Sheiba, people that we had met several weeks earlier in Sucre!

El Cafetal is a small hostel and restaurant run by a French guy called Phillipe. Jose and Sheiba were heading there to look for a room, and we had heard great things about this place and it’s food, so went along with them. The restaurant was closed, but Sheiba persuaded Philipe to open up for us in the evening.

The plan was to head on to Rurrenabaque the next morning, and Sheiba gave us some translatory help with understanding our options when talking to the guy in the tourist office. We thought it was as simple as getting a bus, but it turned out to be a little more complicated and talk turned to trucks, vans, buses and cars… some of it was a little beyond our basic Spanish!

When we returned to El Cafetal later in the evening, some cheap local rum was flowing (we sat at a ‘hostel’ table instead of a ‘restaurant’ one!) courtesy of our friends. The dishes cooked up by Phillipe were superb and were just what we needed after the long walk earlier in the day.

Journey to Rurrenabaque

Our options were clear to us as we left the hostel at 8am.
1- Pay 80 bolivianos to a woman at Coroico bus station who would ensure there was a seat for us on the 18 hour bus straight to Rurrenabaque.
2 -DIY! Head down to the junction as early as possible and pick up some form of transport heading in the direction of the next big town, Caranavi, 70 kms away.

Looking for adventure we took option 2, and jumped in a shared taxi to Yolosita, the junction where the traffic to Caranavi passes. Cost 5bvs. There were two other locals trying to get to the same place and we asked them for advice. They told us to be patient!

We waited at the road junction for an hour before the first potential vehicles came past, but they were all full! After another half hour a couple of busses passed through, also crammed full. Then our luck turned and a truck stopped at the checkpoint, and the locals spoke with the driver. There was room for us and the cost would be 5bvs each…. This is normally a 3 – 4 hour bus journey, so we had no idea how long it would be in a truck…

To spare the nerves of some of the readers from our direct family, we’ll spare the details of the truck ride, needless to say that when we arrived in Caranavi we were filthy, covered in dust from the road. Unfortunately the driver wanted to charge tourist prices, so the ride cost us 6bvs, 1 more than the 5 we had agreed at the start. The journey had taken 2 and a half hours, the next step was to find onward transport to Yocumo or Rurrenabaque.

Our search proved fruitless, and we were unable to find any trucks, busses, taxis or horse and traps going in the right direction. We admitted defeat, and bought a ticket for the 6pm bus, which would have been the one that we could booked originally for 80bvs. The ticket only cost us 45bvs, so when you add on the 11bvs spent on taxi and truck, we saved 24 bolivianos* over what it would have cost to book the bus from the woman in Coroico!

We felt we had achieved something! (*24 bolivianos is just under £2. That’s £2 each by the way!)

All that stood ahead of us now was a 12 hour bus journey into the heart of the Bolivian Amazon, and with seats reserved on the back row, that couldn’t be too bad, could it…?!