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Thanks to our reviewers and writers, you probably haven’t noticed that I’ve been in Bolivia for a while now, even if I’ve kept quiet about it. I figured I’d start to tell a bit about our adventures abroad, starting with a recent trip we took to an area of Bolivia called Los Yungas.
Although technically pretty high up (6000+ feet or 2000 meters) because of its location close to the equator, los Yungas is a semi-tropical area that boasts lots of butterflies, rainforests and if you’re lucky enough to see them parrots, spectacled bears, deer and more. The real appeal for us was that it is only 2-3 hours out of La Paz.
The only problems you are likely to face are related to wash outs, but as long as you don’t hit the rainy season you should be ok. Even if you do though, they’ll have crews out there to fish it ASAP (as was the case when we visited).
The Trip
Once we left La Paz, we started our ascent to a mountain pass where we crossed the Cordillera Real. At close to 5000 meters and with jagged peaks and deep valleys, it makes quite the trip.
If you’re not used to the altitude of La Paz, or maybe even if you are, you’ll probably get light headed at this point. Take photos of the high mountain lakes and water reservoir that serves La Paz. Or, take a gander at the locals herding llamas (pronounced Yah-mahs) and alpacas around. Once you hit La Cumbre (the summit) you’ll start to see cyclists heading down on their way to the Death Road to Coroico. Its amazing trip and you end up passing through a long tunnel to get there. If you brave the traffic and crazy drivers you’ll definitely be rewarded.
When we got to Unadavi we had to turn off the nice, paved road and onto the gravel path that is littered with small streams and boulders (it was good that we bought new tires). In less than an hour you descend from the summit down to about 2000 meters and it’s astonishing how much it changes from barrens to thick jungle forests where parrots fly across in groups and butterflies can be seen everywhere.
The Hotel
This is the point where we reached our destination: Hotel Castillo del Loro.
It’s the only Castle in Bolivia and despite how it looks, it isn’t that old. The President of the Country back in 1935 had it built as a family home and place to invite foreign dignitaries. The problem was that this was the same president that started the war with Paraguay. He used prisoners of war to open access to the area, drag stones out of the river and then put together this fancy, 5 story building.
Well, after foreign nations stepped in and helped Paraguay Bolivia lost the war it started and the then president was forced into exile. He locked the doors and it stayed unused for some time. It wasn’t until the government started giving land back to the locals in the 50s that it became used for anything.
Currently, they are renovating it to turn into an adventure tourism center with lots of trails to waterfalls and precarious bridges across fast flowing rivers (look for the follow up article to see some videos of that).
While we didn’t think much of the hotel, the food was decent and we really enjoyed what we came for: the hiking.
Take a look at the video of the trip from La Paz to the hotel:
