yungas – pmoroni.it

Coroico and Yungas road towards La Paz

10 October 201726 November 2003 by moro

Last part. We leave Santa Rosa, a vicious village of gold miners (we finally understand why these places belong to the gold trail) and we return closed to La Paz going up to the pretty village of Coroico. Here the view embraces the Andean peaks, the Yungas and the Amazon basin. The view is breathtaking.

Finally we take the last and eventful climb to La Paz along the Yungas road (better known as the Death Road or Road of fate), that is the most dangerous road in the world . The small bus limps on the steep slopes, the many intersections with other motor vehicles force us to millimetric maneuvers over the abyss, wrapped in a dark fog. The omens are not the best, but late in the evening we arrive in La Paz, with a wealth of memories and unforgettable experiences.

Gold trail, Incachaca and Santa Rosa

10 October 201723 November 2003 by moro

Second part. Our incredible journey continues from Consata and the atmosphere around us becomes more and more friendly. We have built a friendship that can break down the wall of mutual diversity and sometimes mistrust. Admiring the wild beauty of the Yungas, we received some patient lessons of Quechua and Aymara (Inti and Lupi for the word sun), the languages spoken by the indigenous population. We focus on essential concepts such as friends, family, the forest, the mountains, the sky, the sun and the moon.
In the middle of the night, after warmly greeting our friends from Consata, we find a passage to Incachca, on the gold trail in the direction of Santa Rosa. A bumpy trail takes us in the heart of the jungle through a night landscape of incomparable charm. The forest is animated by the sounds of countless living beings, they breathe, sing and dance in unison. We perceive all the immense energy of the Pachamama. With our traveling companions, we reach Incachaca late in the night, where we camp under the stars, but we are so excited that we could not sleep. The jungle prepares us to a magnificient dawn with a crescendo of music tunes. We arrive in Santa Rosa.

Sorata towards the gold route

10 October 201721 November 2003 by moro

First part. From La Paz the small and crowded bus rises and falls slowly to Sorata, cozy resort perched on the slopes of Cerro Ancohuma (Janq’u Uma in Aymara). From this plateau begins a furious descent to the Yungas, the area of transition between highlands and the Amazon basin. The fog envelops this enchanted and sometimes spooky world, where sudden chasms open in bottomless valleys.

The village of Consata hides precisely in one of these valleys, where the river of the same name flows. The village received us with great hospitality and we are accompanied by a delegation of young and old along the river for a pleasant and interesting excursion. Here begins the most intriguing and complicated part of our journey to the discovery of the unknown Bolivia.