‘scuse me monkey, I believe that’s MY pocket

Experiencing Christmas in Bolivia was a bit of a culture shock. Instead of kids being screamier than usual and orange C-grade celebrities singing Christmas carols on TV, we had our own nativity scene made up of cheeky monkeys, a bear, turtles, macaws and guineafowls (who look just about as funny as their name sounds).

OK, so it wasn’t a typical Bolivian Christmas. For the holidays we travelled to “La Senda Verde,” a funky little eco-tourism resort in the green little town of Coroico.

You can get to Coroico by minibus from La Paz (about three hours), or ride yer’ bike down the world’s most dangerous road – if you make it all the way down (alive).

Coroico was deliciously green, misty and muggy. It’s also deliciously flat around the town centre – a welcome change after a month of gasping my way around the wavy streets of La Paz.

Apart from learning the Spanish names of each of the animals, we also learned (or at least I did) that bears eat porridge in real life too! And consequently, that some Germans don’t know the story of Goldilocks – weird.

# of dead cockroaches found in our hut: 3

# of beers I consumed at night to attempt to forget about said cockroaches: 3

# of times I woke up in the hut thinking a monkey (or cockroach) was attacking me: 4
# of monkeys who attacked at once to attempt to reap the contents of my pocket: 3
# of moneys who I fell in love with and wanted to squish into my bag to take with me back to La Paz: muchos!

Our favourite Spanish phrase in Coroico: ¿Por qué no?

-Alana Faigen