ENVIRONS

ENVIRONS

15.01.1994

Anywhere you want to go out of Cochabamba involves climbing one of the hills which form the bowl in which the town lies.  The road to the Chapare climbs to the east and reaches a height of about 4,000m.  Once you leave the town behind there is a series of little settlements, Sacaba, Coyumi etc., strung out along the roadside.  These are virtually 100% indigenous.

The houses are made of adobe bricks which the people make and dry in the sun.  Some of the more prosperous dwellers have brick houses but these are scarce.  The traditional roof is also made of adobe or in some cases thatched, but this is tending to give way to corrugated asbestos or tin sheeting or, in the more prosperous houses, tiles.  As in Castile in central Spain, the houses are mostly left as they are which makes for a fairly drab urban landscape, if we can call it that.  The front wall of some houses is plastered and coloured but the remaining walls are left. I feel that a coat of lime would be an asset, not only from the aesthetic point of view, but because the quicklime would kill of many of the insects and other things which must live in the walls and roofs and which are one of the main methods of transmission of Chagas disease. Many houses have an adobe wall surrounding the yard or garden.  

There is seldom any paving in front of or between the houses.  This is where the domestic animals roam - cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys, ducks etc. - and the women and children spend their time tending them and trying to prevent them from wandering on to the road. People wash both themselves and their clothes in the nearby streams and nearly all activity takes place in the open.  Most houses are open and people wander in and out.

In some settlements there have been government schemes to provide tapped water or sanitary installations.  In the latter each house has a latrine which is whitewashed, and each latrine has a number - not the house, mind you - the latrine.  

Something which attracts your attention as you go by is that many houses have a long bamboo pole sticking up with a white flag on the end.  This was quite intriguing and I did not know what it meant.  The nearest thing I could think of was that in northern Italy such white flags signify that the owner of that house sells cheese.  I wasn't so far off the mark.  Here it means that they sell chicha, the local alcoholic brew made from maize.  Sure enough, outside each of these houses there is a huge metal container, similar in shape to the ceramic ones used in Andalucía to knead bread dough, and the women stir the contents endlessly over a charcoal fire.  When the brew is ready, the liquid is strained off into a bucket and the corn cobs are thrown away.  What the process is after this stage I don't know, although I would assume that it is left to ferment.  There are lots of tables and chairs, frequently under an awning, where people congregate to eat and drink.  How anyone can drink alcohol at this altitude beats me.  I bought a bottle of Chilean wine the first week-end we were here, but it seems to rise to the top of your skull and press down on it.  Needless to say, after that experience we have not had any more alcohol.

There are also some villages to be seen some distance away from the road and I think they look considerably more attractive, because the houses are surrounded by cultivated fields.


As you climb, the air becomes cooler and soon there is a fine drizzle.  It is not really rain.  You are simply in the midst of the clouds and the moisture is being carried by the clouds.  There is a huge reservoir up there which supplies Cochabamba's water. Near the reservoir there is a hotel set in 250 hectares with cabins which you can rent. The manager of the hotel turned out to be from Lisbon, so we had a nice chat with him.  The hotel restaurant does a roaring trade at weekends when the middle classes from Cochabamba come out for Sunday lunch.

We have been up there a few times because, so far, amazing as it may seem in a country which is so depopulated, this is the only place we have found to be able to walk and let the dogs run free. There is a path right the way round the whole reservoir.  We have as yet only been about a quarter of the way round.  There are green meadows sloping gently down to the water's edge with cattle grazing on them, which are very reminiscent of lakesides in Scotland.  The vegetation is mainly pines and there are loads of wild mushrooms and toadstools growing everywhere.  One day when we were there it started to rain, although it was not cold, and I was amazed to find when we got back home that my face was totally sunburnt!

One day Robert said he would take me a little further along that road to the beginning of the tropical area.  From the hotel the road begins to drop down again and in no time the vegetation starts to change: tall palms, hardwood trees, Swiss cheese plants with GINORMOUS leaves, castor oil plants - all the things people cultivate in Europe but with the hugest leaves you can imagine.  The temperature begins to rise and the characteristic smell of decomposing vegetation assails your nostrils. This is the cloud forest.  It reminded me of the jungle at Tikal in the Guatemalan Yucatán Peninsula and I cannot wait to get back!

So, within an hour and a half's drive from Cochabamba you have a Mediterranean climate, a high altitude temperate climate and tropical cloud forest! Also along that road there is a grave by the roadside (there are lots of them) which is where Vicente Hervas, one of the peasant leaders, was shot by the security forces.  Depending on how many flowers are on it is an indication of how the coca trade is going.  The day we passed it seemed to be flourishing.