Chulumani (Bolivia)

I spent a few days staying with a couple of French-Bolivian friends in La Paz, and it was them who suggested I go to Chulumani for the weekend. So off we set together as a small group for a three-day trip. Though Chulumani is only around 75 miles from La Paz, it still took us a good three hours of travel time to get there! The road taking you to Chulumani is not exactly what you'd call wide, and many accidents occur along it. With the scenery and landscapes changing as we progressed further, and the climate increasing in humidity, we gradually found ourselves travelling further into the Yungas region, which marks the beginning of the Amazon rainforest.

We stayed at a village on the first night. Since the place was well off the beaten track, we were the only tourists there! The village was full of life due to the fact that there was a large market open around the main church square. There were some excellent cheese empanadas, which you had to queue up to buy.

We spent the next two days walking about the surrounding area and doing some camping in the wild (it was so so difficult to find somewhere to camp that was acceptably flat and had a water source nearby!). The climate was humid and there were quite a lot of mosquitoes. We encountered a few local country people and came across numerous fields of coca plants: this is Bolivia's main coca-growing region, with the famous leaves sold all across the rest of the country once harvested. I have to admit I was kind of looking forward to experiencing the cool freshness of La Paz again once we were ready to head back at the end of the three days.