13th-15th November 2018
Dropped off by the shore of Laguna Strellani with a backpack full of camping gear and all the food I will need to eat for the next few days, I was at the beginning of the El Choro trek.
After passing through a car park full of tour groups getting their bikes ready to ride down the ‘World’s Most Dangerous Road’, I reached the ranger station where I signed in. I noticed that there didn’t seem to be too many other entries in the book in recent days. I had heard this was a popular hike, but Bolivia does receive significantly fewer visitors than Peru and we were entering the low season.
I began upon the trail, looking forward to the idea that this was a walk where I would get to experience some solitude.
At around 4,500 meters altitude, the air was thin and I was rather breathless on my way up the pass. Once there, I was engulfed by clouds, totally obscuring – what I guess to be – the amazing views at the top, but I guess you can’t always win them all.
From the pass, the trail snaked down into the valley. Eventually, I reached a green meadow where there were some old ruins and a woman was herding llamas. She was the first person I had seen for a couple of hours and I didn’t see anyone else until over an hour later when I reached the tiny village of Chucura, which was the next checkpoint. A man got me to sign my name in his book.
I arrived at Challapampa at around 3pm. The owner of the campsite wasn’t there, but visitors still had access to water and the squat toilet. There were three French guys in the process of setting up their tents. We didn’t speak too much that first evening because I was tired and after making myself a dinner of soup I went straight to my tent to sleep, but I would spend the next couple of days living in their shadow. They were three, and thus sharing the burden of carrying all the gear as well as tasks such as pitching, packing and cooking, whereas I was doing all this alone. They were always a little ahead of me but, because we began the same day and had similar stamina, we ended up staying in the same places.
Shortly into the next morning, I experienced problems along the trail. The whole trek isn’t very well marked but most of the time it doesn’t matter because there is only one way you can go anyway.
When I reached the part known as ‘El Choro’, at first I walked all the way up to a series of huts up the hill. Like most of the dwellings along the trail, they were empty – with it being the rainy season – but I realised I had reached a dead end so I had to turn back. Maps.me seemed to be indicating that the trail was along the bank of the river so I ventured there, clambering along rocks because there didn’t seem to be a defined trail.
I could see on the app that there was a bridge around the corner though. Except that when I reached that location I merely found the remains of one which had collapsed.
This wasn’t a new situation to me. This kind of thing happens a lot in South America, a region of the world which is prone to earthquakes and landslides, and usually, if a new bridge has not been built yet there will be a detour to reach an alternative bridge. I spent the next hour walking back and forth, clambering around banks, venturing back up to the huts in El Choro and even backtracking along the trail for a while because I was convinced I must have missed something, but eventually I realised that I had no other choice but to take off my shoes and try to wade across the river. And pray that there was a trail somewhere on the other side (because I couldn’t visually see one).
I am not being dramatic in saying that it was dangerous. I was almost waist deep, it was a fast running river and the rocks beneath were slippery and I couldn’t see them properly. At one point I almost slipped and I was very conscious of the fact that I was alone and that if something happened to me there would be nobody to help or even know about it.
I did make it to the other side though, but some of my things got wet along the way. After putting my shoes back on, I clambered around a few different parts of the bank and eventually found a way back onto the trail.
I am very disappointed with the people in charge of this trek for this very irresponsible behaviour though. I went through two checkpoints and neither of the people there told me anything about it. Forewarning me would have not only saved me a very frustrating hour of my life but, more importantly, it is dangerous to have no indication of how to rejoin a trail again once it is broken. When people are lost they end up wasting time they may not have the food supplies for and climbing places they shouldn’t be.
The trail went a little uphill after that, through the cloud forest. I encountered another broken bridge an hour later. This time they had improvised a somewhat haphazard replacement but I think that it would have actually been safer to wade this one too, to be honest. When I crossed it the logs were twitching beneath my feet and at one point one of them swerved a little. Someone is going to have an accident on it one day, but luckily it wasn’t me.
I reached San Francisco by mid-afternoon and it was one of the few campsites where the owner was actually present, but I decided to carry on a couple of hours longer to Bella Vista as there was still some daylight left.
When I reached the Bella Vista the three French guys were there and had already set up their tent. I was feeling in a more social mood that evening so I chatted to them more. They had experienced confusion when they reached that river too but, with there being three of them, crossing it was a bit easier.
The third morning I heard thunder as I was packing away my tent and by the time I was on the trail, it began to rain. With it mostly being downhill that day I managed to keep up with the French guys for most of that day. We passed Sandillani, the final campsite of the trail, an hour in and met a Swiss couple who had spent the night there. Of all the campsites, Sandillani was the most beautiful – it had a garden overlooking the valley and lots of little cabins which used to serve several purposes – but it was also a sad place because the Japanese man who built it and lived there for fifty years recently died and the place has begun to fall into disrepair.
It began to rain heavier, so the French guys and I made our way. I put my cover over my backpack but didn’t put my raincoat on as it was fairly warm and I had not showered for a few days so I would prefer to be wet and refreshed than sweaty and clammy.
I didn’t get to take any photos for the rest of that day because my camera was stored safely within my backpack. It was pouring with rain and the views were obscured by clouds anyway. We made good progress, reaching Chairo before lunch.
Chairo is connected to a road but still quite far away from any public transport system, so we talked a man there who owned a minivan and negotiated a price to be taken to Coroico.
Overall, I have to admit that El Choro was not my favourite trek I have done over the last few months, but I did miss a lot of the views because I was there at the wrong time of the year. It was certainly good for birdlife and seeing some of the cloud forests of the Yungas though.
For more photos, click here.
Tej Turner 