GOLD, COCA FARMS AND SPIDER MONKEYS: TRAVELLING ALONE IN BOLIVIA
A stick of dynamite had exploded in the air above the refuge, causing the resident parrot population to erupt into a fit of squawking. It was shaping up to be an interesting morning.
The La Senda Verde animal refuge is reached by travelling along Bolivia's North Yungas Road, the famous Road of Death. A three hour taxi ride had delivered me from the breathless streets of La Paz, situated high in the Andes mountains, down to the warm valleys of the Yungas region, the beginnings of the Amazon rainforest. It was in this idyllic spot, working as a volunteer with the refuge's rescued monkeys, that I'd chosen to spend the last few weeks of my backpacking trip in South America.
However, dynamite-throwing hadn't been mentioned in the leaflet. On my arrival in the otherwise pristine valley, I learned that for some months, a mining company had been illegally dredging the nearby river for gold, causing severe damage to the surrounding vegetation and contaminating the valley's main supply of drinking water. In a country's tourist hotspot, it's hard to imagine such a situation being allowed to arise without a certain amount of political corruption.
Fearful of a backlash from the incensed local villages, the miners were now throwing sticks of lit dynamite into the hills, hoping to scare the communities of mostly poor indigenous coca farmers. It was certainly working with me. I imagined how my home town would have reacted to such a situation, the 24-hour news coverage, the mass panic. However, in the face of this aggression, and with no official support, the surrounding communities remained impressively steadfast. After weeks of similar spats and political meanderings, the miners eventually abandoned their site, leaving the refuge's disgruntled parrots in peace.
The trip had already been one of the greatest adventures of my life. Travelling with two of my best friends, we'd seen penguins off the southern Argentine coast, trekked together through the stunning mountains of Patagonia, photographed the moai of Easter Island... However too often we felt we had been caught up in a crowd of fellow tourists. For the last legs of our trip we had therefore decided to travel alone.
I will always remember the mornings spent hugging cold Spider monkeys, or playing with the boisterous Capuchins in that beautiful valley at “La Senda”. But crucially, it was having the freedom to slow down and live for a while among genuine Bolivian communities that, for the first time, made me truly feel like a traveller in an unknown culture.
